The seventh film from “Greenberg” director Noah Baumbach isn’t so much a traditional narrative as it is a character study of Frances (Greta Gerwig), an underemployed dancer struggling to find herself in New York City. It plays like a cleaned up black-and-white version of “Girls”; an emotionally rich and funny portrait of twenty-something ennui.
“Frances Ha” is a collection of details. There is an engaging story, but it’s not exactly laid out in three acts. It feels more intimate and raw than the usual twenty-ish crisis flick and with each detail we get another piece of the puzzle that makes up Frances’ life.
As she navigates her difficult New York existence we learn of the estrangement of her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner), the endless search for a place to live and even the $3 surcharge she must pay at the ATM.
More importantly Gerwig and Baumbach paint a compelling portrait of a woman who doesn’t always make the right choices, who doesn’t always even learn from her mistakes, but is never anything less than human and interesting. By the time she comments on her own choreography that she, “like[s] things that look like mistakes,” we understand that the wrrors she makes offstage, during her dance of life, are the very thing that builds her character.
The supporting cast (including “Girls” star Adam Driver) is strong but this is Gerwig’s movie. Once again —after films like “Lola Versus” and “Arthur”—she hands in an authentic, affecting and purely wonderful performance as a woman who learns to look inwards rather than to others for happiness.
Unlike “Girls,” a television show that mines similar territory, “Frances Ha” never stoops to shock value to make its point. Instead it relies on warmth and charm to capture the vagaries of a mostly rudderless life. Highly recommended.
“Greenberg,” the new film from “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach, is the kind of navel gazer where upper middle class people spend a great deal of time wondering what they’re going to do with their lives. The movie sees Ben Stiller in “master thespian” mode playing the title role; a character so disagreeable he makes Larry David seem like Tinkerbelle.
In this story of Yuppie angst Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is fresh out of treatment for depression. Determined to “try and do nothing for a while,” he takes on the easiest job he can find—house sitting for his brother while his sibling is on business in Vietnam. It should be six easy, breezy weeks, but nothing in this guy’s life is easy breezy. Between a sick dog, an alienated best friend and his brother’s assistant Florence (played by mumblecore queen Greta Gerwig), he is reduced to a pile of misanthropic neurosis. Fighting off happiness wherever it may appear in his miserable life he alternately seduces and rejects Florence, playing her like a yoyo.
“Greenberg” benefits from Baumbach’s ear for dialogue and his insight into the human condition, it’s just too bad he wasted his talents on these two characters. Placing lines like “youth is wasted on the young… life is wasted on people,” in Roger’s mouth is clever and almost makes you like Roger, but Stiller plays him as such a self pitying sad sack; so socially awkward to the extreme with an anger management problem to boot, it is impossible to get onside with him. Stiller’s best work has been characterized by tetchy characters, but in his comedies the angry edges are smoothed out by an underlying sweetness he brings to his roles. “Greenberg,” the film and the character, are much more grown up than Stiller usually plays, but that maturity has brought with it an unpleasant edge.
In Florence Greta Gerwig has found an aimless character that seems to have stepped out of one of the low budget mumblecore films she is best known for. She’s a doormat with enough self awareness to realize that she “has to stop doing things because they feel good” but seems to be unable to find the inner strength to improve her life or her choice of men. Gerwig, in an extremely natural and unselfconscious performance, however, plays her with no small amount of charm. The way she strokes the dog with her foot as they wait for the vet to see them is touching, subtle and very real. It’s as un-Hollywood a performance as we’re ever likely to see in a Ben Stiller movie.
The most convincing relationship in the film occurs between Greenberg and Ivan ((Rhys Ifans) an old friend and former band mate. Their scenes overflow with the well worn familiarity of two old friends who have grown apart.
The trailer makes “Greenberg” look much more like a Ben Stiller comedy than it actually is. While well made and intermittently amusing it is more a rambling character study of the kind of people you would normally spend your time trying to avoid.
The Squid and the Whale, a coming-of-age story about a teenager whose writer parents are divorcing, gets my vote for the most over-looked movie of 2005. Before the Oscar nominations were announced I thought that Jeff Daniels’ performance as the self-centered failure-of-a-father-figure was a lock for a Best Actor nod. Daniels is an actor who is so natural a performer that I think we often forget how good he is. I’d lump him in the same category with another Jeff—Jeff Bridges—who is also often overlooked.
The film is a semi-autobiographical story by former New Yorker writer Noah Baumbach and avoids the pitfalls that so many family dramas that deal with divorce fall into. It’s poignant, funny and in a movie filled with great performances and scenes one sequence stands out as one of the best not only from the movie, but one of the best of the year. There is a scene in a doorway between Daniels and his ex-wife, played by Laura Linney, where in just a couple of minutes we learn all we need to know about their relationship—the tenderness that once existed and the bitterness that now touches every moment of their lives.
The Squid and the Whale is one of the best movies of last year, and if you missed it at the theatre check it out on DVD.
