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.
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