When Frances Ha (2012) initially came out, it didn’t appeal to me. It seemed pretentious: why would a film about hipsters in present-day Brooklyn be shot in black and white? Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Co-written by Noah Baumbach, also the director, and Greta Gerwig, also the lead, the movie follows the friendship between Greta’s character Frances and Sophie. Frances is a struggling dancer (only an “apprentice!”), while Sophie is becoming more settled in her life. This is very much a movie of this era, along the lines of Girls, which debuted the same year. It has an entirely white cast of “artists,” who are actually supported by their wealthy families, many of whom have famous parents themselves: Sophie is played by Sting’s daughter, Mickey Sumner, while Meryl Streep’s daughter, Grace Gummer, also has a role. Meta. Unsurprisingly, Baumbach is influenced by the French New Wave: besides being shot in black and white, the film features simply constructed dialogue (often about minutia), with music by Georges Delerue, the composer for François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). If you’d like a peek into a gentrified Brooklyn, this might be for you. Watch Frances Ha on Netflix.
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