![\"frances_ha_ver2\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/frances_ha_ver2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nOne of my favorite movies of the year. I am filled with a sense of gratitude that it even exists. It gets everything right. That was my life. That was how I lived. That is what it looks like to be a striving non-mainstream-type-person in New York City. I have left restaurants to run to an ATM, frantic because they wouldn’t take a credit card. I have had those random nights where suddenly a group of people meld into one, and no one judges, and no one ruins the mood, and you are all strangers but your communion with said group shimmers with the magic of being able to connect<\/a>. The awkward dinner party filled with lawyers and people who just had babies and people who can go to Paris and stuff because they have real jobs and money rang so uneasily true and reminded me of my first relationship to a guy much older than me: he was a lawyer and I was \u2026 in my early 20s, a struggling actress holding down dumb day jobs and taking classes and being an understudy to get Equity points, and all of that was what I SHOULD have been doing, but trying to explain all of that to lawyers at fancy dinner parties was nigh on impossible, and made me feel bad about myself, and it’s so ephemeral, it’s just in the glances, the uncomfortable pauses, and into those pauses opens up an abyss where you question your entire existence. THAT is what Frances Ha<\/i> is able to show. So well done. I have a friendship like the one between Sophie and Frances<\/a>. It is a friendship unlike any other I have seen on screen, one that gets the dynamic between two really really close friends. It gets it so right. The one shot of Frances reading out loud as Sophie knits \u2026 simple moments like that, why are they so absent from the screen? But that’s where the gratitude comes from because now it does exist on the screen. And it is a signpost, beckoning: “Come this way.” <\/p>\n \n \nThe fact that there are no villains, even the bitchy dancer played by Mamie Gummer is not all bad. You can certainly see her point, and you can certainly understand her frustration with Frances. Even Nadia, the woman who holds the dinner party which is so super uncomfortable with poor Frances trying to make conversation and bombing out with every comment \u2026 there’s a moment later when Frances is talking about what she wants out of a relationship, that moment at a party where you look across the room and exchange a glance with your significant other, not a glance that has to do with sex or emotion, but a glance of understanding that means, simply, “That’s my person<\/i> over there.” And Frances’ monologue is rambling and drunken (Gerwig is brilliant), but there’s a flash on Nadia’s face, a flash of empathy, a flash that she does, after all, get it. It is not quite comfortable to have a random person show up at your dinner party and make bizarre slightly combative comments all night, but in that moment, Nadia sees<\/i> Frances. These are such small human moments, but they end up being gigantic in scope. Universal. Frances is not made to be adorably clumsy, or under appreciated for unfair reasons: She really is difficult, and, in some respects, “un-date-able”, as her friend Ben (who clearly is half in love with her) keeps telling her. <\/p>\n \n \nShe does not behave in the usual cliched manner, and she is not given a perfect man who has to break through her defenses to make her happy. Because what needs to happen is that Frances needs to settle in and accept the goodness of the life that is right there in front of her, not out there in the future. Frances is not made to be tragic, or pathetic (who the hell does she thinks she is, still trying to be a dancer at the age of 27?). She is not a Loony-Tunes Nut totally out of touch with reality. It’s just that dreams sometimes die hard. That’s the way with old old dreams. The dance concert, choreographed by Frances, brought a powerful surge of emotion for me, because I understood the compromise that it represented for Frances, but I also understood the huge breakthrough. <\/p>\n This is such a positive<\/i> film. (And what good luck to have seen Mauvais Sang<\/i> just last week<\/a>, so now I recognize the tribute therein in Greta Gerwig’s delirious dance across what looks like Houston Street, all to the accompanying soundtrack of “Modern Love”). <\/p>\n \n Frances Ha<\/i> is firmly on Frances’ side, even as it shows her in her worst moments. It does not clean up her flaws, things that may be endearing at first (her room is messy because she’s “busy”) but soon grow annoying to her friends, and that is PART of being on her side, of not marginalizing her. Characters like Frances are usually wacky sidekicks. But here, she steps center stage. There are scenes that are mortifying to sit through, and the cringe that it brings is one of recognition. At least that was true for me. I have been that person. I have felt those things. I have clung to my friendships in similar ways. I have had to let things go. I understand the momentous feeling one gets when you write out your name to put on your little urban mailbox, and there’s only one name to put there, and maybe there’s a pang that there aren’t two names, but at the same time, it’s a beautiful independent feeling to know that this is your place, and your name, and you are trying to be a grownup and there it is, on your mailbox label. <\/p>\n How do you even put this tiny stuff onscreen and have it tell such a gigantic and universal story?<\/p>\n Frances Ha<\/i> does. <\/p>\n \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my favorite movies of the year. I am filled with a sense of gratitude that it even exists. It gets everything right. That was my life. That was how I lived. That is what it looks like to … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n