Frances Ha
O will get an operation tomorrow. It’s a very small procedure and the likelihood of anything going wrong is very small, but I am grateful to everybody for being so understanding that I am worried because of course any operation comes with a risk, no matter how small. At the same time, the recent events in Paris have heightened my sense of insecurity (while making me re-think my own political opinions), and it’s not entirely unrelated to my worries about O either. After all, we have a special relationship with Paris and if if wasn’t for Paris, O wouldn’t even exist.
Compared to that, I have absolutely no feelings for New York, except for a sort of love-hate relationship with it. If 9/11 happened again, I would probably feel less bad than back then even. I have lived in Philadelphia and Boston, and prefer both cities to New York because they are less, well, overrated. At the same time, as a person I am not particularly Parisian. I’m not skinny, I don’t smoke, I don’t wear stylish clothing and I don’t make my child cry to his sleep and drop him off at a crèche at a few months old. (I know these are all clichés, but if you want to blame someone, put it on Pamela Druckerman.) But I fulfill all the clichés of the typical New York City lady: overly worried, slightly neurotic, somewhat intellectual but not in the French way (but somehow smitten with the French), somehow artistic, proud of putting loads of time and money and thought into your own offspring. The only international newspaper I read is the New York Times, and Joanna Goddard is my idol, except for her latent beliefs in in esoteric crap. (So is Vivian Maier, and I will get to her at some point too.)
Because of this, “Frances Ha” hit a nerve. I don’t think I have ever seen a movie describing my 25 year old self so well as this film. While my life’s circumstances are so utterly different from hers (I had a pretty stable, potentially lucrative job, I have no female bestie and my friends are significantly less quirky), I have never seen a female character on screen that I could so strongly identify with. The New Yorkian style of hipsterness that Frances Halladay embodies is scaringly familiar to me, and I am sure this is because Greta Gerwig was actually able to put herself into the film. I’m in awe of how well it works in the film, and it is narrowly beaten by “Before Midnight” for my favorite film of 2013. (It does narrowly beat “Inside Llewyn Davis”, which is quite amazing if I think about it. I adore that movie and thanks to Loris I own it too.)
The only thing that gives “Frances Ha” a small dent into its awesomeness (of no fault of its own) is the fact that Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are a couple. It bothers me so much that she was able to influence the screenplay so deeply because she is fucking the director. She would definitely not have gotten the chance to make “Frances Ha” if she wasn’t in this relationship, and it’s just another example for the sad state of the film-making business.
I actually have strong doubts that Baumbach and Gerwig could ever make something even remotely as good as “Frances Ha”, this is how much I liked this slice-of-life-y quirky little story of a struggling performance artist.
PS. Also yes, we are definitely Generation Frances Ha. That leaves a rather sad aftertaste when you think about the Paris bombings a bit, but let’s just enjoy our little film.