While We're Young

Year of Release:  2014
Director:  Noah Baumbach
Screenplay:  Noah Baumbach
Starring:  Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Grodin, Adam Horovitz
Running Time:  97 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama

New York City:  Josh Schrebnik (Stiller) is 44 year old documentary filmmaker and teacher.  After making a splash with his debut film, he has spent ten years working on his follow-up, and is married to Cornelia (Watts).  One night Josh meets 25 year old aspiring filmmaker Jamie Massey (Driver) and his wife Darby (Seyfried).  Josh is enamored with the free-spirited hipster couple, Cornelia is more reluctant, but still finds herself drawn to Jamie and Darby.  Before long the older couple are adopting the tastes and lifestyles of their younger friends, at the expense of their older friends.  But things go wrong, when Josh realises that Jamie's values and worldview don't match up with his own.

This is an enjoyable and consistently funny film which does make some pertinent points about ageing.  Josh and Cornelia are approaching their mid-forties and so are a long way from being elderly (full disclosure I am currently 41) but they are facing the specter of old age there are things that they want to do in their lives that they realise they have to do sooner rather than later, or risk never being able to do them at all.  Also they are stuck in a rut, Josh has been working in the same film for ten years, and still doesn't know what it's about.  Both he and Cornelia feel alienated from their best friends, who are new parents.  They are drawn to Jamie and Darby because of their creativity, energy, and their enthusiasm particularly for retro pop culture.  However, Josh soon comes to realise that Jamie is full of pretence and artifice, and is also very manipulative.  However the film makes it clear that Jamie and Darby are part of a changing world, and Josh and Cornelia are not condemned or really mocked for embracing a youthful lifestyle, in fact it proves a mostly positive experience.  Ben Stiller is funny and engaging in the lead, and Adam Driver gets a lot of mileage form his cool hipster persona.  Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried are largely sidelined though.  Noah Baumbach has usurped Woody Allen as the king of New York comedy-dramas, mixing heart and humour in nearly equal doses.   This isn't his best work but it is still worth checking out.

Amanda Seyfried, Adam Driver, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts in While We're Young 

Mistress America

Year of Release:  2015
Director:  Noah Baumbach
Screenplay:  Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig
Starring:  Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke
Running Time:  84 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama

Eighteen year old Tracy Fishko (Kirke) is in her first semester at Barnard College in New York City, and is struggling to adapt to college life.  Following her mother's advice, Tracy reaches out to Brooke Cardinas (Gerwig), her soon-to-be stepsister.  Tracy is fascinated by the older, impulsive, free-spirited Brooke, and her eccentric lifestyle.

This is almost a companion piece to the earlier Noah Baumbach - Greta Gerwig collaboration Frances Ha (2013), in which Gerwig plays a similar impulsive but fragile character.  While it is not laugh-out-loud funny, it is amusing throughout, and is an often moving take on the pains of young adulthood.  Both Tracy and Brooke are very similar, if at different stages in life.  They are both trying to find their place in the world, and they are both ambitious.  Tracy, who has literary ambitions, is inspired to write a cruel short story based on Brooke called "Mistress America", portraying her as a  self-destructive, ridiculously impulsive "manic pixie dream girl".  Brooke has ambitions to start a restaurant, but while she is good at ideas, she is not very practical, and finds it hard to realise her ambitions, and at the age of thirty, Brooke, despite her seeming confidence and free-wheeling lifestyle, is just as confused, fragile and vulnerable as Tracy.  Some may find it difficult to sympathise with the problems of a couple of relatively wealthy, young, white people trying to make friends and fulfill their artistic ambitions in New York, and that is fair.  While I did not always find the character likeable, I always found them sympathetic and relatable.  Like the lead charcaters, the film has a loose, free-wheeling feel to it, including a crucial extended sequence late in the film, set in Connecticut, which while funny and effective, still feels a little out of place with the rest of the film.  Baumbach directs with some style, getting a lot from small character moments.  There are some good performances, but the film is completely dominated by the luminous Greta Gerwig.       

Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke in Mistress America   

Frances Ha

Year of Release:  2013
Director:  Noah Baumbach
Screenplay:  Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig
Starring:  Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Charlotte d'Amboise, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen
Running Time:  86 minutes
Genre:  Comedy drama

Frances (Gerwig) is a struggling 27 year old dancer living in New York City with her best friend Sophie (Summer).  Her life is upended when Sophie announces that she plans to move to a more upmarket neighbourhood, which Frances can't afford, forcing her to find somewhere else to live, while trying to make ends meet.

Photographed in shimmering monochrome, this virtually plotless film is more a glimpse into the life of Frances, an ambitious young woman, trying to make her own way in the Big Apple, albeit without much success.  Frances herself is frequently frustrating, impulsive and irritating, but is never unsympathetic or unlikeable.  She makes bad decisions and frequently gets herself into trouble.  Early in the film she breaks up with her boyfriend because she doesn't want to move in with him and she really shows very little interest in dating anyone, although one of her roommates does seem to be interested in her.  The big relationship in Frances' life is her friendship with Sophie, and this film portrays friendship in a beguiling and very relatable way.  The two share jokes, and tell each other pretty much everything from their deepest secrets and hopes and fears to something funny that one of them sees on the way to the grocery store.  They fight, they argue, they get on each other's nerves, but the bond is always there.  Even Sophie's fiance, and Frances' jealousy, doesn't destroy their bond.
While the loose, plotless nature of the film may put off some viewers, and some may find Frances deeply annoying, this is a smart and funny film, which has a lot to say about friendship and finding a place for yourself in the world.  Certainly the biggest asset to the film is Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the film with director Noah Baumbach and stars as Frances.  Charismatic and quirky, with a mix of exuberance, dorkishness and vulnerability, she owns the film, and is in virtually every scene.  Recently Greta Gerwig has spent more time behind the camera than in front of it, as the writer and director of acclaimed films Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), and this is a reminder of what a great actress she is.

Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha