“Populaire”
Directed by Régis Roinsard 
Starring Déborah François, Romain Duris, Bérénice Bejo and Shaun Benson
Foreign, Comedy
111 Mins
R

 

Filmed in the whimsy stylings of French New Wave, Populaire jars the bay window open and lets the breezy charm waft in and take the helm. Tackling the inconspicuous topic of typing competitions in 1959, director Régis Roinsard turns what should have been bland and academic into an exciting match of athleticism, fueled by a cheery performance from Déborah François. 

 

When Rose applies for a highly competitive position as secretary to insurance man Louis Echard (Romain Duris), it is clear that she is under-qualified but lands the job after revealing her gift for speedy typing…with two fingers. Unknowingly igniting a fire in Louis, Rose’s gift for typing stops her would-be employer in his tracks. Rose’s unadulterated, cherry-blossom cuteness, which is perfectly articulated when she’s typing so fast and furiously that her bra strap slips out, her hair comes undone and she haphazardly looks up at Louis and exasperatedly puffs the loose hair out of her eyes, lands her the much-envied position as Louis’ secretary but it’s not long before it’s evident that she’s not quite cut out for the job.

Her caution-to-the-wind attitude and total lack of professionalism wind up getting in the way of her job and so, intent that he can make her a world champion, Louis comprises with Rose that if she wants to keep her position and not be sent packing, she must train daily to become a master typist.

 

 As Rose prepares for the Regional Championship, there are all sorts of exercises she must engage in from transcribing famous novels to learning to type blind to running alongside Louis as he jeers her on to go faster. The satirical montage is no rarity in the film world but here you don’t feel the need to turn to your neighbor and scoff. Without debasing the charmed ambiance, Roinsard shows that he knows how to turn the norm to his advantage. He’s able to skate over familiarity by carpeting everything with whimsy, transforming every potentially stale beat into an opportunity for cheery rapture. With this infectious nature, the film lives and breathes goodwill.

 

Breezy to a fault, Roinsard avoids making any biting political statements about the era of “modern women” except to give us a glimpse of faux-liberation stuffed behind an assistant’s desk.
Yes, the film is satirical but the satire is played more for laughs than for earnest investigation. Now is this really the film to cut open the stigma on the worldwide women’s liberation movement?

Absolutely not. If anything, attempting to cram some critique on the era or philosophical judgment of the era into the film would have jumbled its easy-going angle and tipped it towards the insincere. Instead, Roinsard knows exactly what he’s making and based on audience’s overwhelming loving adoption of The Artist, this is sure to go down just as easily.

From the get go, the score is bubbly and inviting, setting the stage for the purely pleasant experience about to unwind. Similarly, the costume and set design are colorfully decadent and cheery, bringing to life this sugarcoated vision of the world. Even the globetrotting manages to maintain a sprightly sense of optimism. As to the artificiality of the history lesson, it clearly takes a filtered stance on snarky but friendly competition as global relations.

Depth was never the goal here and Roinsard scores major points for sticking to his flowery guns. Like similarly woozy Jean-Pierre Jeunet films, it’s just a wonder something so fleet-footed, impractically sunny, and self-confident can still be so intoxicating and winning.

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“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.

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, Gewrig 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.

Mistaken for Strangers is a bizarre rock doc because it’s not really a rock doc at all. Tom Berninger, brother to The National‘s frontman Matt Berninger, has instead made something else entirely – a film that uniquely attempts to transcend the rock doc genre with a hyper-self-aware, avant-garde approach.

Originally planned as any other run-of-the-mill rock band exposé, Tom Berninger sets out to follow the popular indie band, The National, on their biggest world tour yet but the film quickly morphs into a whole new breed of documentary. Instead of executing your standard surface probe (what the band stands for, the bandmate’s history with each other, the group dynamic, how they write music, the everyday stresses of being up-and-comers, etc.), Mistaken for Strangers oddly devolves into an autobiographical biopic about “filmmaker”Tom Berninger, who has always been a black sheep of sorts.

Berninger sees himself as a bit of a failure, decaying in the shadow of his brother Matt’s international fame, and it’s no surprise why. Matt’s toned and handsome, Tom’s plump and average. Matt’s a huge success, Tom doesn’t even have a job. Matt’s quiet and introspective, Tom is crass, drunken and hunting for laughs.

Their relationship is loving but strained and when Tom is invited to join Matt and The National for their yearlong world tour, Tom still just can’t seem to do anything right. From forgetting the water bottles and towels to getting lost on his lonesome, everyone, including himself, sees Tom as a failure and a burden. Even as a documentarian, he is more intent on recording his own ups-and-downs than getting usable footage of the band and its members for his planned movie.

But instead of letting his failure as a rock doc filmmaker choke his enthusiasm, he finds new life in his work. Refusing to let his experience fade into a memory of boxed-away HD cards and a jumble of chaotic footage, Tom decides that his own personal experience on the journey would rise to the forefront of the film and boldly makes himself the main subject. Choosing to shift the focus of the film from the alt-pop-icons to himself is a bold move on Berninger’s part and one that works… but only for those willing to hear a listen to a whole new tune.

Unfortunately for Berninger, most people’s reactions are likely to be one of confusion or retaliatory annoyance. In making his documentary about The National actually about himself, Berninger has risked alienating The National’s unaware fan base as the band here serves as a backdrop to Tom’s early-to-mid-life crisis rather than the focal point. Touting this as a documentary on The National is disingenuous at best and deceptive at worst but lay that complaint at the marketing team’s feet rather than Berninger’s.

Going in under the assumption that this is the definitive take on the band would likely result in some unhappy customers, but anyone willing to watch an average Joe open up his life, his fears, his dreams, and his disappointments will be captivated by Tom’s brutal honesty and cacophonous introspection. But even while tearing his heart out of his chest and showing it to the audience, Berninger can’t seem to rinse the chaos that rules his life from his own filmmaking tactics.

From the get-go, the film is a disorganized mess. The opening scene shows a little outdoor interview between Matt and Tom where Matt rightly accuses Tom of having no questions prepared or any concrete plans on how to get his film made. From this though, the message underneath emerges, as this is a story about figuring things out along the way. Even in the midst of entropy, somewhere in the cross-continental jumble, a powerful ray of humanity leaks, helplessly, from the lost, gentle soul of Berninger.

As a documentary of the band, the film is an undisputed failure but as a look at the difficulty of family dynamic set to the backdrop of the indie rock’n’roll scene, Mistaken for Strangers has an oddly humanizing allure. It’s a movie with a point, the point being that everything’s going to be alright. Some people live in the limelight, some people in the shadows, and waiting for our ticket to be called is nothing to be scoffed at.

While it’s hard to imagine an audience attending an alleged National documentary not feeling duped when they watch the melancholic humor of Tom dominate the already brief run-time (which is already surprisingly light on interviews with band members or live performances), but dare they stay through it, they’ll be sure to come away with an understanding of one more person on this Earth. Berninger’s undeniable earnestness, unreserved candor and easy humor allows his film to skate through its ultra-brief runtime imparting a message that may be deeper than it appears at first glance.

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‘What Maisie Knew’
Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel
Starring Onata Aprile, Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgård and Joanna Vanderham
Drama
99 Mins
R

What Maisie Knew is an emotional powerhouse of a film led by an adorably funny-faced young actress functioning on a purely natural level, allowing the “performance” underneath to disappear entirely. It strikes a particularly meaningful chord for the “divorced generation” and anyone who has been part of a broken home will feel heart-warbling empathy for the fledgling Maisie. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel tread carefully through difficult territory and instead of offering a tired, sentimentally-formulated heart-throbber, they have crafted a compelling but tragic familial drama that breaks the mold by being dreadfully honest.

At once a counterpoint and response to Beasts of the Southern Wild, What Maisie Knew explores themes of forced adolescence. Instead of the dreamlike wetlands setting of Beasts, this is bare-bones realism plunkered down in the heart of New York City.

The picture opens with Maisie (Onata Aprile), a sweet little five-year-old swept up in her childish fantasies and playing make-believe. She’s a perfectly normal little tyke, albeit abnormally cute, who plays with toy horses and ogles at the wonder of the New York skyscrapers looming above her ritzy apartment. But there’s a different breed of normalcy in Maisie’s life, as she is surrounded by her parents incessant arguing and is left almost unfazed by the cycle of domestic admonishment unfolding around her.

As she merrily trots about the house collecting pizza money or making herself her own food and passing out in front of the T.V., her parents, Susana (Julianne Moore) and Beale (Steve Coogan) holler at each other, getting incrementally louder and more personal in their attacks. Although it is abundantly clear that this hostile environment is no suitable place for a child, it’s the only world that Maisie knows and it’s become as normal to her as a walk in the park or the taste of a Kraft grilled cheese sandwich.

When her unmarried parents do call it quits and split ways, a battle ensues behind closed doors for custody of their dear Maisie. But the fighting doesn’t stop there. As they duke it out in court, Maisie is little more than a pawn in their game of comeuppances. Rather than caring for her interests, these two self-involved parents are more concerned with their own career successes and egos then they are about their own daughter.

Their resulting courtship for custody is more a battle of pride that one born out of genuine care and love. To them, Maisie is a trophy to be won, not a child to be cherished. She is a source of comfort and self-worth that they otherwise lack. Poor Maisie is stuck in the midst, quietly navigating her confused and crumbling world but even after the dump-trucks of neglect that they bury her in week-by-week, Maisie is helplessly adoring of her parents, making it all the more crushing to watch them let her down again and again.

In the haze of separation, both parents get hastily hitched, Susana to the young and lanky Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård) and Beale to long-time live-in-nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham). With Maisie’s folks all wrapped up in themselves, the responsibility of caring for Maisie falls unto the shoulders of these new, semi-surrogate parents. At first obligatorily sparing with each other, Margo and Lincoln recognize their counterpart in each other and their mutual love for Maisie blossoms into an unexpected friendship.

As Beale and Susana’s sanctimonious posturing plays out, a universal truth about love is revealed, particularly the notion that love is not petty nor does it want for itself. Here, their professed love for Maise is more an addiction than anything – a one-hit fix of undeserved lovin’ to get them going through their next few weeks. Dissecting their parent-daughter relationship we find none of the tropes of love as described by John Lennon but something more demanding and hollow. Petty love, however, is not criminal and so the warfare marches on.

Ticking down the list of performers, there is nothing but praise to pile on. Aprile as Maisie is great beyond her years and it’s hard to tell if she was even acting. Whenever she speaks, an age-appropriate-innocence as well as empathy beyond her years seeps from her as naturally as fresh water from a spring. To draw the inevitable comparison, she’s a white Quvenzhané Wallis who deserves recognition just as much as the former did. Mommy-not-so-dearest Julianne Moore gives a measured and striking performance as Susana as she allows her own selfish lifestyle to overshadow her daughter even though she tries to bend things and make them seem otherwise. As a counterpoint to the overbearing and illusive Susana, Joanna Vanderham’s Margo has the beating soul of a mother and puts priority in that stake. Vanderham drips with earnest concern and youthful naivety and really gives a fulfilled sense of spirit to Margo. 

Over in the men’s boxing ring, Beale and Lincoln duke it out for paternal authority. Coogan’s sneering, stiff-upper-lip British persona is ideally matched for Beale and although he’s not a genuinely bad-guy, you can’t help but think of him as little more than a parent of convenience. He’s more likely to buy an expensive gift than to have a genuine conversation with his daughter. While Beale plays the role of father when it suits him, Lincoln is a rock. Rocking the Skarsgård-slump, Alexander Skarsgård as Lincoln is disarmingly gentle and loving. Laying the brooding antihero to rest, he offers up a mild-natured and wholly likeable character that you cannot help but root for. 

What hangs with you after the film is over and the lights come up is not the moments of ferocity but the moments of quiet. It’s the sense of hope imparted by the lingering light buried in the innocence of children. It’s the silent reeling the characters are left in in their own private moment of self-realization. It’s the acceptance of tough truths.

We’re ultimately left to wonder about the lasting scars and impending legal battles, as Maisie’s life going forward is destined to be an uphill battle with no foreseeable end. There are many years to suffer through and many more wounds to endure for this little girl with a gumdrop personality and yet her path isn’t painted as too glum or hopeless.

In the age of divorce as norm, this is a strikingly close-to-the-bone story that cuts deep into the ethos of modern day child-rearing.  It’s sentimental without ever being sappy and, in the end, even more touching because of its emotional difficulty. The hard truth to this story; there’s no light at the end of the tunnel and fairy-tales only exist in books. With phenomenal acting across the board, tender directing and a gem in little Onata Aprile, this is a film worthy of respect that, like its lead character, should be appreciated and cherished.