Distance: 2 miles and at home yoga
I think Frances Ha is a movie that will feel more and more brilliant over time. The tone is so offhand, the fluidity of life so present, the main character so in motion that you only catch the subtle details - like the momentary just right lyric - on the fly. Also I was very busy sorting out the poignancy from the humor, the tears and the clown are so intermingled.
The setting is New York (and sometimes elsewhere) and the Big Apple is a character. But the movie doesn't depend on it because the life stage explored plays out world wide. It's that time just beyond college (or whenever you launched whether you went to college or not). You don't know what you're doing really and you don't even know what you don't know. Every day can be heartbreaking. You don't really have professionalism so maybe you get fired. But, whoa, weren't expecting that and you don't have any money - really. Well maybe you have parents with some, but you can't ask, can't let on to them - or anyone - what's really going on. If you know it yourself.
You're truly faking it; not at all clear what making it is but dancing as fast as you can. And so is everyone else. Every foothold is so precarious. But the one thing you have is the youthful energy, idealism and naivety (and compulsiveness) to keep putting on that game face, roll with the punches you don't really grasp, fake it (lying if necessary), blindly put together relationships with only the thinnest veneer of adulthood about them.
Once 'through' most of us don't look back or do so in a sketchy way. You're just glad to have survived. At least I was - and, like the main character, I was wobbling around on my colt legs in New York City. So the movie moments - while very contemporary - were challenging as I identified with the fragile strength and masked heart and soul of the main character - and probably all the people in the movie. And, even today, I/ we all still encounter moments when all we can think to do is fake it and hope.
A very good movie that seems to be about one youngish main character but touches most adult lives. It also has an incredibly cool cast starting with the amazingly fresh Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner (Sting's excellent daughter), Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (who -as Dean and Britta - contributed perfect music).
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