Greta Gerwig's breakthrough film ``Frances Ha''. What is the continuity with Oscar nominee “Lady Bird”?

Synopsis of "Frances Ha"

Frances, a 27-year-old apprentice modern dancer, lives a happy life sharing a room with her best friend Sophie in Brooklyn, New York. However, she was having a hard time developing as a dancer, and soon after breaking up with her boyfriend, she was no longer living with Sophie, and had to move around New York in search of a place of her own! She also returned to her hometown of Sacramento, and moved to Paris. I went on a bullet trip, worked part-time at my alma mater's dormitory, and went back and forth. Frustrated by the fact that her friends around her are calming down, Francis reevaluates her life and tries to move forward even as she struggles and hits walls. Everyone sympathizes with her clumsy, rough-and-tumble, yet charming appearance, and their hearts become light, and their hearts are touched at the end, when the meaning of the mysterious title ``Francis Ha'' becomes clear.

Index

• Portrait of a 27-year-old troubled woman struggling in monochrome New York
• Continuity with "Lady Bird" based on "personal material"
• Gerwig's love and hate for Mumblecore, her home turf.

Portrait of a 27-year-old troubled woman struggling in monochrome New York

Popular actress, director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig is one of the leading figures of our time, setting new standards in the world of film. She is the only woman nominated for Best Director at this year's Academy Awards (the other nominees are winner Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water," Christopher Nolan for " Dunkirk , " The Shape of Water Peele for " Get Out ," and Paul Thomas Anderson for " Phantom Thread "). However, her film "Lady Bird" is by no means a flashy, shocking work. Rather, it has a modest and unassuming style. However, it is extremely groundbreaking in the sense that it has made us realize how many films have been dominated by men up until now. With her sharp, gentle, neutral eye and careful direction based on her very personal feelings, she vividly repaints the ordinary landscape of youth.

One of the key works that propelled Gerwig to stardom was the 2012 film Frances Ha, which she starred in and co-wrote. The director was Noah Baumbach, who is also her partner in A Very Private Affair(his most famous works include The The Squid and the Whale in 2005). The film was highly praised by critics and cultural celebrities, and word of mouth spread, making it an unexpected hit across the United States. This break led to Gerwig serving as a jury member for the competitive section at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival in 2014.

"Frances Ha" trailer

The heroine, Frances, played by Gerwig in this film, is a 27-year-old apprentice modern dancer living in Brooklyn, New York. He shares a room with his best friend from college, Sophie (Mickey Sumner, musician Sting's eldest daughter), in an apartment on Vanderbilt Street, and spends a relaxed and fun life there. However, one day, Sophie suddenly announces that she is going to live with another friend in Tribeca, and she also starts talking about marriage with her boyfriend, Patch. Meanwhile, Frances breaks up with her boyfriend and ends up getting rejected by the members of the ballet company she belongs to as a trainee. This is how the story unfolds, with her crying face and her struggle to recover from the bee state...

"Frances Ha" ©Pine District, LLC.

She's clumsy, clumsy, and unpopular, and even though others tell her she's not getting any younger, she can't break free from a moratorium on self-discovery. And she values ​​sisterhood (solidarity among women) more than romance with men. Gerwig vividly embodies this image of an ordinary woman today. At the time of the film's release in Japan in 2014, I thought it was similar to the sisterly bond and "just be yourself" philosophy of "Frozen " (2013), which was very popular at the time.

The worldview presented here is something new, but at the same time, old-fashioned monochrome images permeate the whole of "Frances Ha." They are reminiscent of " Manhattan " (1979) by Woody Allen, whom Gerwig admires, and the Parisian cityscapes captured in the films of the Nouvelle Vague. The soundtrack features music by Georges Delerue, who also adorned the films of François Truffaut. Also, the scene where Gerwig sprints through the streets of Chinatown, accompanied by David Bowie's classic " Modern Love " (from the 1983 album "Let's Dance"), can be seen as a re-use of the famous scene in Leos Carax's " Dirty Blood " (1986) where Denis Lavant runs.

"Frances Ha" ©Pine District, LLC.

By fusing modernity and tradition, my own sensibilities and established frameworks, I update the form of the standard. I guess that's Gerwig's style of filmmaking.