My year with Frances Ha

"It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's - That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess."

-Frances

There are many types of love. The paternal love, manifesting itself as pride and devotion. There is the corresponding love of a child for their mother or for their father; a knowingness that, to them, they owe everything, and they are the people in this world they need to make proud. The close-knit love that comes with sibling-hood or a deep friendship. The romantic love, and the life-affirming freedom of vesper that comes with it. Then, there is the type of love most commonly found within movie critiques such as this one; a form of extreme fondness, more often than not for something or someone who has not chosen to have an impact on our collective lives, but has nonetheless continued to do so. When most people think of their favourite movie, they only address it with this fifth breed of love. Today, on the one-year anniversary of Frances Ha's UK release, and hence, me watching it for the first time, I am going to attempt to explain why and how I feel all four for Noah Baumbach's godwork of a movie.


I first heard of Frances Ha on Tuesday 23rd July 2013. This was not a film long-since on my radar, or one I had been looking forward to for months. Spending a week living alone with my brother on rugby tour and my parents out of the country, I refreshed Twitter one morning on my now-deceased old phone to find this tweet from rather excellent Telegraph film critic and my namesake, Robbie Collin-

Frances Ha is a film so plump with joy, you feel like it's going to burst. Straight into my 2013 top five. DO NOT MISS THIS IN THE CINEMA.
— Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews) July 23, 2013

That was enough for me. I think I replied out loud, which is actually about the closest to having a conversation with an actual flesh-and-blood human I'd had all week, and sat back, waiting for Friday, the day upon which my local Cineworld would begin showing this obscure little movie about which I knew so little. My knowledge going in was limited to a skim of the IMDb logline ("Frances is a dancer... But she can't really dance", I recall recalling) and a squint at the poster. I'd never heard of Greta Gerwig and had no recollection of the name Noah Baumbach. I'm managed to garner that it was in the English language, and left it at that. I was in a fairly good mood that morning, and sat down in my seat of preference with an odd optimism, but not necessarily hype. And, by god, did it blow me away.

It won me over very quickly. I didn't laugh much, but I grinned the whole way through, and when the iconic ending hits, I found my mind relapsing into a better place. I was happy. Genuinely, properly happy. I opened this by describing the many types of love (I swear, I'm getting to it), but I think there are even more definitions of happiness, and I'm not sure all of them are correct. Laughing at a series of jokes over one hour amongst a three-week breakdown does not mean you are happy in that hour, having a good time does not happiness make. Happiness, true happiness, is far deeper back in the mind. It's not something we can get to ourselves or change easily. Frances Ha shifted my then-glum, pessimistic mindset, to sheer joy. No other film has ever had this effect on me. Hell, very few life experiences have ever had this impact on me. Throughout every scene, Frances (Portrayed by Owen Award Winner Greta Gerwig) has a glint in her eye; an optimism; a love. As I left the cinema, I cancelled any and all plans I had that day. Frances Ha had made me look at the person in the street in a different, a better, way, and I wanted to make the most of that. I positively skipped through the streets, resisting the temptation to yell "AHOY SEXY!" at anyone I knew. Hence, I owed Frances Ha everything. The child's love shone through. During that particular month, I was, shall we say, in a period of transition, and Frances Ha carried me through. It has kept me going and the mere thought of the film has cheered me up on so many occasions this past year.

It's telling, and somewhat interesting, that, in my initial reaction/review, I expressed "Jealousy" towards Mickey Sumner's character, Sophie, as I wished to be Frances' best friend. Whilst by the time I was watching the film again on DVD, having had six months to reflect on my two cinema trips to see Frances, I declared Frances "One of my best friends in the whole world". It's comforting to watch Frances Ha. In fact, one rotten night, I put the film on, instead of opting to talk to someone about it. I think I put it best in the second Letterboxd review I just linked to when I said-

"It's a perfect character study of a character so immensely likeable you can't get enough of 'studying' her." ... "In fact, that's all wrong. It's not a fascination, it's a love. With Gerwig's portrayal, she goes beyond being a 'character', even a well-loved one, a Sherlock Holmes or a George Bailey, and turns into a person."

There's that word again. Love. I love Frances. In which way? I'm not sure. But the 86 minutes could quite easily be my devoted vesper. When she's on screen, I'm drawn in. Gerwig is an impossibly charming screen presence anyway (Who else could have made The Dish & The Spoon watchable, never mind sporadically enjoyable?), but in Frances, having written the dialogue herself, she hits a new level. I also think there's something in the fact that it's her boyfriend or two years directing the thing: Without every turning and winking to them, she has a warmth towards the camera and, by extension, the audience. Baumbach is also benefits greatly from their union. His other films (With Greenberg being the real extreme) are likeable films about unlikeable characters. Perhaps because he's writing for someone he loves or perhaps because that's how Gerwig'd rather work, Frances is instead an extremely likeable character, even when she has no right to be. Rounded, developed and three dimensional, Frances deserves to be remembered as one of the best-crafted characters of contemporary cinema.

And yet I know she won't be. This is where my paternal instincts towards Frances Ha kick in. In the last twelve months, I have written seven Probably Just Ramblings blog posts, five Letterboxd reviews, seventy-five tweets, four features for my radio show and two emails to Wittertainment about Frances Ha. I feel a need to champion it. This is a micro-budget movie, with marketing costs that barely stretched to setting up an unvalidated Twitter account. I, and the other who love it, have to try and give it the time in the spotlight it deserves. I was incredibly proud when Greta Gerwig got her Golden Globe nomination in December. She didn't win, but it made the Globes worth watching for me. In fact, I tweeted about how fantastic it was that millions of people had just heard the film's name for the first time as Robert Downey Jr. read the nominations to a global TV audience. Hopefully, in trying to articulate the depth of my feelings for the heap of celluloid here, I might convince one more person to give it the 86 minutes of their life the film demands (If you haven't seen it, please let that person be you).

It's ironic that I choice to open this piece with clear-cut definitions of love, when Frances Ha is very much a film about the complexities and overlaps of the most human of emotions. In fact, Frances' attempt to define it, quoted atop this essay, goes far further than me. Do I feel all types of love for Frances Ha, or do I just feel love, in it's all-encompassing glory, surrounding me? It really doesn't matter. The important thing is love itself. I have a signed photo of Greta Gerwig, in the iconic Frances poster pose, that I blew my student loan framed over on the other side of my room. Every now and again, I catch it out of the corner of my eye, and I smile. It may not be a party, and I may not be laughing and shining, but the secret world is there. Frances Ha is my Sophie, and I am so thankful for the year we've been living together.