The Search for Another Frances Ha

I all but sacrificed my late teenage years in favour of sitting alone in a plush chair accompanied only by a projector and a few dozen other people, whom I largely chose to ignore. I made a point of seeing near-enough every film that saw UK cinema release. On a regular basis, I would wonder why. Upon opening Facebook, a means of viewing the loudmouthed and the insecure's personal highlights reels, I would see people performing the kind of actions those on the screen I was slavishly watching were doing (Namely: Having friends). The majority of films released are, almost by definition, average, and a further 60-odd percent of the remaining films are rubbish. Last year, I sat through four movies where Bruce Willis contemplates his retirement whilst holding a machine gun. I sat through the Moshi Monsters Movie, for crying out loud. They say time is money, and if that's the case I feel it would only be just if I were reimbursed on a similar pay scheme to that Willis demands for movies nowadays.

However, once in a while a film comes along that makes all the glazed-eyed bald-headed snooze-a-thons in the world worthwhile. More precisely, once. Frances Ha was my favourite film of last year, and one that reinvigorated my love of both cinema and of the world. It's a film filled with such frame-to-frame effervescence that I feared the projector may combust and leave into an optimistic doughnut in the place of ashes. Greta Gerwig puts in the performance of a lifetime, and by which I don't just mean the best performance she'll ever put in, I mean the best performance I've seen in my lifetime. It's perfect, encapsulating cinema that swept me up over it's 87 minutes into a ball from which it has yet to release me. I've seen it seven times now, and after five of these viewings I've thought to myself "This is hands-down my favourite film". Very few films have ever garnished this level of affection from me. Certainly none of the standard-issue action flicks and hackneyed romcoms have hit me that hard.

Perhaps the greatest thing about my discovery of Frances Ha is that it was just that: I saw the film on the Friday of release, and I hadn't heard of it until the Tuesday. Even then, I didn't watch a trailer or read a detailed synopsis. I had never seen Gerwig on screen before, and I was not familiar with the directorial work of Noah Baumbach. In fact, during the film, I was confident it must be a debut feature. The only reason I found myself watching Frances Ha was because I have taken to watching everything. The habit might have sucked away my free time for three years, but it gave me Frances, a character disturbingly close to being my best friend and secret crush. That was a trade worth more to me than all of Bruce Willis' combined salaries dating back to 1991.

My need to champion the film helped it grow in my affection. I spammed 200andwhatevernumberIhadatthetime Twitter followers with constant updates as to whether or not I still loved the film (I invariably did) and handed it it's fair share of the spoils at the 2013 Annual Owen Awards. In fact, I have grown to regret not giving it more. With the power of hindsight and a DVD player, I would hand Mickey Sumner (Not even nominated! What swine chose these?) Best Supporting Actress and I might even steal away personal favourite Edgar Wright's maiden Owen win for Best Screenplay. Handing over those awards gave me more license to tweet about my unstoppable passion for the film. I took every opportunity to make people know I adored it. I swear, I've got family members I love less than this lump of celluloid.

However, here comes the problem: Frances Ha has now ruined cinema for me. I can watch slack-jawed Bruce Willis cringefests the same as I did before, and I can enjoy a decent Muppets romp just as much, but independent cinema, where I have previously found such joys, is now dangerous territory. For instance, in the last week I saw Fading Gigolo, a film written by John Turturro in which glamorous women talk about how much they fancy John Turturro and then more glamorous women pay to have sex with John Turturro, and I totally avoided contemplating the maddening levels of male fantasy and vanity clearly on show. I avoided the contrivances and creepiness of the entire set-up. All because I am desperate to see another Frances Ha. I discovered the film's existence about a fortnight prior, and promptly set out to avoid all plot details and trailers, wanting to mimic the Frances Ha conditions. After all, a small, independent, 90-minute film set in New York on a limited summer release? This must be this year's Frances.

I had completely missed the point. Frances Ha came out of nowhere and sideswiped me, and I just sat and fell desperately in love with this most beautiful film. At no stage before, during, or even the immediate aftermath of watching Frances Ha, did I think "FILM OF THE YEAR!". It was about an hour later, sat in Costa alone, still high on the joy that had unfolded before me, that I realised it would be running unopposed for the Letterboxd top slot. I have been calling Frances Ha the best film of the decade since it's release, but never quite understanding what that means, more using it as a means of wild hyperbole, as a way to express my love of the film. If Frances Ha is to be the best film of the next ten years, it means I won't see a film as good as Frances Ha for ten years.

And that's OK, because for the next ten years, I'll still have the title that brought me so much joy back in 2013. I don't have to chase affection from a film not willing to provide it. I think a stage of love, and I do believe that is how I feel about this film, is acceptance, and me and Frances are just beginning to work through that stage. I currently have Richard Linklater's Boyhood penned in, somewhere near the back of my head, as a potential 'Next Frances' contender. If nothing else, I hope articulating this feeling will help me erase that thought. I'm sure Boyhood will be great, but I have to understand it won't be the next Frances Ha. There won't be a next Frances Ha. At least, not yet, but when I see it, I'll know, and I'll begin screaming from the rooftops all over again. If that's not motivation to keep screwing over human relationships in favour of the joys of cinema, I don't know what is.