Waiting in the Wings
It’s just about time for my annual rewatch of Frances Ha. In a week, I will be one year younger than Greta Gerwig when Frances Ha, which she starred and wrote, was released and one year older than Greta Gerwig’s titular character.
Why is this important?
Frances Ha is a comedy about Frances (Greta Gerwig), a woman in her late twenties who lives in New York with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). She’s barely scraping by with the income she has from the dance company she’s in, but all issues in her professional, romantic, and aspirational spheres are quelled by the love and support she receives from Sophie. Greta Gerwig and Director Noah Baumbach play up Frances and Sophie’s friendship with such joy de virve that one might mistake it for something other than platonic, but it is just a really rich and fulfilling friendship. Unfortunately, Sophie finds a new apartment in a part of New York that Frances can’t afford and a rift opens between them. Frances is left to move on with her life without the grounding force that is her best friend. What follows is Frances struggling with all the sort of anxieties that come with an underemployed young adult in the 21st century (although, sex and romance are noticeably absent in most of the film). Every hardship causes her to make lateral moves or sets her back. She eventually realizes what great opportunities and relationships she has, that she has to become comfortable adjusting her expectations, and stop just waiting in the wings for things to change and move forward.
Baumbach and Gerwig have created something special with Frances Ha in that, other than subject matter, semi-autobiographical characters, and whip-smart naturalistic dialogue, it bares very little resemblance to the rest of their work. It has this loose and free structure that allows you little peeks into Frances’s life (accompanied by 70s rock music1 and scoring from French New Wave films) that gives Frances’s stressful life a sort of buoyant fun. It’s gorgeous black and white photography immediately gives this contemporary story a sort of nostalgic and timeless feel.
What’s really magical about Frances Ha for me is how revisiting it throughout the years I’ve found my relationship changes with it. I saw this film the weekend it came out in 2012, I was in college and it was easy to imagine me in Frances’s position because it seemed like most of my peers and I were doomed to the life of a struggling artist. Post-graduation, it became a mirror of how it felt being directionless, uncertain about the future, and tired.
Now, being the age Greta Gerwig was when she filmed this, I can’t help but continue comparing myself to the hapless Frances. I’m in the process of finding a new place to live, much like Frances. Many of my friends are adjusting what they want to do with their lives, where they want to spend it, and who they want to spend it with. Essentially, a lot of people my age going through the similar stressors of wanting to develop some momentum to change their lives for the better, but lacking the awareness or energy to do so.
The official synopsis of the film says “Frances wants so much more than she has, but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness”2 and I’d say that kind of foolish optimism is a vibe 28-year-old me seems to be going for.
Frances Ha is available for streaming on Criterion Channel and available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Aliases of a Clown
With the news that Jon Hamm is playing the titular Irwin M. Fletcher in the upcoming comedy film Confess, Fletch (named after the book for the same name) costarring alongside fellow Mad Men3 alum John Slattery (along with Kyle MacLachlan, Marcia Gay Harden, Barb and Star4 star Annie Mumolo, and many others), my interest in the Fletch series was piqued. So I threw on the 1985 Chevy Chase film simply titled Fletch.
Despite the fact that Fletch is a comedy and stars SNL alum (and reported total jerk) Chevy Chase as a wisecracking reporter with a penchant for goofy disguises, Fletch never veers into full-on parody of the genre like Naked Gun would three years later. Instead, everything is almost played completely straight with Irwin M. Fletch being the primary source for snarky comedy. It ends up working really well, Chase’s charisma sells even the lamest jokes and electrifies scenes with Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, who plays the focus of Fletch’s romantic eye. His irreverent tone bounces off of the complex neo noir-ish mystery in a way that doesn’t undermine the narrative, and, in a lot of ways, his goofy narration livens up the proceedings.
All this mostly makes me excited to see Jon Hamm, a performer who has longed for comedic roles5, assume the identity of Fletch and deliver the same kind of wry one-liners as Chase did.
Fletch is available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Stray Observations
Next weekend at The Film Lab, they’re showing one of my all-time favorite comedies, Wet Hot American Summer (2001). Absolute absurdist surreal comedy with the unlikely roster of Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon, Christopher Meloni, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, H. Jon Benjamin, and many more. It’s a strange hilarious parody of summer camp movies, but is less focused on skewering that subgenre as it is focused on just producing non-stop funny bits. Easily one of my most quoted comedies. It breaks my heart that I probably won’t be able to attend one of the screenings of this classic, but I encourage you to! The Film Lab is such a great location for drinks and movies. Buy your tickets! Go see it!
Feeling old because I’m listening to the popular new album Sour by Olivia Rodrigo. Old because it’s made by a teenager and it’s full of teenage break-up songs like “Driver’s License” and “Good 4 U” that remind me of the big feelings of my teenage years. It is objectively a good album, but can’t help but feel very “hello fellow kids”6 when I listen to it.
A new favorite of mine has arrived on the Criterion Channel, Living in Oblivion (1995) starring Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, and Dermot Mulroney. I won’t give away too much of the plot because the structure and style are so interesting, but, simply put, Buscemi plays a film director struggling through the production of his independent movie. It’s a hilarious comedy, but it has some really touching (and strange) moments too.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions hit theaters this past week. Admittedly, I am a big fan of the first film, Escape Room (2017), where six strangers are to escape deadly puzzle laden rooms. It is a competently made horror/thriller with great set designs and special effects, but it has such a cornball stupid script. It’s fun to watch these idiotic characters struggle to solve each room’s puzzle. The sequel has a similar set-up, but with smarter characters and more complex puzzles. The story is still just as unintentionally silly and there are some insane twists. Highly recommend.
Next weekend is my birthday! Do me a favor and give me a few dollars to buy a coffee or something.
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In the most iconic sequence, it plays “Modern Love” by David Bowie while Frances finds her first apartment in her post-Sophie life
One of the greatest shows ever, but I’ll elaborate on that in another issue.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) is available for streaming on Hulu. Delightfully silly movie about two middle aged women (Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig) who, after losing their jobs go on vacation in Florida, become involved with a supervillain plot, and both fall for a sensitive rogue (Jamie Dornan) who longs to be an “official couple” with his supervillain boss (also Kristen Wiig). Its comedy is somewhere between Austin Powers and Step Brothers, but to put it simply, it’s silly nonsense in a really good way.
Hamm, who obviously was brilliant in Mad Men, is underrated in his comedic (guest) roles in Wet Hot American Summer: The First Day of Camp, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and 30 Rock (haven’t seen 30 Rock, but I’ve been told the whole joke with his character a dozen times)
Invoking this meme when I listen to Sour.