SIFF ’13 REVIEW

SIFF Review: FRANCES HA

Name: Frances Ha review
Item: Frances Ha
Rating: 4.3
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · May 13, 2013

Where to watch: Streaming on Netflix and AMC+, free on The Roku Channel and Kanopy, or rent or buy on digital (updated October 2026)Watch on Netflix · Watch on The Roku Channel · Watch on Kanopy · Rent or buy on Amazon · Buy on Blu-ray/4KAs an Amazon Associate, Silver Screen Riot earns from qualifying purchases.

“Frances Ha”
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen and Patrick Heusinger
Comedy
86 Mins
R

Noah Baumbach is at his least caustic with Frances Ha, an idiosyncratic and delightful black-and-white mumblecore film about a New York City girl coming to terms with herself in the haze of her post-collegiate days. Newcomer Greta Gerwig offers up a performance in the vein of Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin from The Graduate as she mumbles and bumbles her way through the purgatory of her mid-twenties. To continue the comparison with The Graduate, Frances Ha is an equally quirky, if less lovable, film that thrives on silly banter and whimsy spirit.

▶ Streaming on Netflix. More picks: The Best Comedy Movies on Netflix Right Now →

Frances and Sophie (Mickey Sumner) are best friends. They do everything together. They eat together, smoke together, they even sleep (platonically) together — so long as Frances takes her socks off. But as Frances breaks off her relationship right when Sophie starts a new one, their lives head on different trajectories and their seemingly unbreakable friendship starts to show cracks.

Without Sophie in her life, Frances focuses on her middling career as a dancer but ends up spiraling downward, a fact that is illustrated by her progressively less-impressive living situations as she moves from small apartment to smaller apartment to cramped dorm room. As she ostensibly devolves backwards, she reaches her own little whit’s end and resorts to packing in tidbits of a life she feels she should have.

As she begins to live out these snippets of a fantasy life, there is a nagging sense of Frances fighting to feel relevant and keep up the fantasy of herself that she has woven. She sees a rich life, full of fun and meaningful work in store but can’t quite seem to hop off the lilly pad. This feeling is one that most of our generation can sympathize with. A feeling of obligation to accomplish X and Y and see A and B before you transform into the insignificant party guest without a story. A pre-30 quasi-bucket list that hangs above our heads.

Luckily, the dour notes are kept to a minimum even when the film is exploring the more difficult sides in realizing, and overcoming, the random and trivial nature of self-progress. No matter how down on her luck, Frances refuses to abandon her goofy smile and veneer of perfect success and satisfaction and that happy-go-lucky attitude is what keeps the film so cheery. The sense of levity may come from Frances’ dancing but it lingers on in her spirit.

Even though Baumbach has clearly had a vast contribution to the film, Gerwig is sure to gain some praise for her double-headed role as star and writer as this is very clearly her show. Frances Ha appears to be more her vision than Baumbach’s, who has a much more acrid and seasoned voice. The film clearly comes from the perspective of a young woman struggling to be someone in this stunted US economy.

However much of a captain Gerwig may be, her and Baumbach seem like the perfect marriage of talent as Gerwig’s cheery attitude keeps Baumbach’s sour edge from spoiling the fun. Meanwhile Baumbach injects a mature and sensitive directorial hand that gives the film a learned crispness and tautness that an amateur like Gerwig would most likely not be able to achieve by herself. Neither get the better of each other and the combination allows Frances Ha to transcend a story about the 2010’s, 2000’s or the 1990’s, as this is a film for all generations.

The topic at hand seems to be a popular one of late: a recently graduated twentysomething chick, struggling to pay monthly rent and find her place in the world.Gerwig’s Frances is a much more palatable presence than Lena Dunham‘s entitled persona on Girls. Her vision of modern-girl-lost tackles the zeitgeist of generation-unnamed without any of the preachy faux-wisdom that dominates that popular show. Even though I would hardly call this a film intended for girls, any twentysomething chick with a taste for Dunham’s particular flavor will be sure to eat this one up.

The comedy is easy and the drama meaningful in Baumbach and Gerwig’s Frances Ha, making it a perfect storm of societal commentary that doesn’t wield its satire like a knife’s edge but rather picks and jabs in a playful manner.It’s gleeful revelry in quirk and fancy-free nature make the film a delightful little retreat from the troubles which haunt and pester us in our own lives. Frances Ha is filled with a bubbly sense of life and an effervescent lead character that smooths out some of the more melancholic moments and makes the whole thing go down as easy as a Sunday mimosa.