Girls the Movie?

No, I don’t have insider information on an upcoming Lena Dunham movie—even though we are with the same literary agency, how cool is that?—but I did see a film last week that kind of struck me as similar to the HBO show Girls.

And it’s one I recommend. Frances Ha.

It’s written and directed by Noah Baumbach, and I always like his films, so I suppose it’s no great surprise that I liked this one. I also think the actress, Greta Gerwig is really interesting and the only other film I ever remember seeing her in was Greenburg... Another Baumbach movie, with Ben Stiller. Which was a interesting, if strange, and kind of sad.

And I suppose one could say that Frances Ha is sad too, but I didn’t see it that way at all. I just saw it as joyful. The main character, Frances, is a tad lost. She’s in her late twenties and acts like she’s eighteen, and she’s barely surviving, and in an a fair bit of denial about her talent and the probability that she'll ever earn a living as a dancer. In many ways, she lives in a deluded dream world. 

Although she doesn’t mooch off people, even her parents, and I found it admirable how she gets by on her meager income. And while she's proud, and does reacts to some situations to save face and/or prove  to others that she believes she'll make it as a professional dancer, she's also willing to (really) humble herself to pay the bills and put a roof over her head. And that's one thing that reminded me of Girls...

Plus, it’s about young women in NYC. It’s about female friendships. And it’s about quirky strange characters, very different from most characters you normally see in fiction.

But all that said, I found it utterly joyful. And maybe it made me feel just a little bit better about my apparent inability to be a real grown up. :)

Anyone else see it?

The reason behind the title isn’t apparent until the very last moments of the film, and that "reveal" was adorable too. And probably not what you’d expect. Hint: it had nothing to do with laughing. 

But the fact that “Ha” makes you think of laughing, or ridicule...  fit the movie so well.