Mistress America
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Written by: Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig
Starring: Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Matthew Shear, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Heather Lind, Michael Chernus, Cindy Cheung, Kathryn Erbe, Dean Wareham
Comedy - 84 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Aug 2015
Written by: Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig
Starring: Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Matthew Shear, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Heather Lind, Michael Chernus, Cindy Cheung, Kathryn Erbe, Dean Wareham
Comedy - 84 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Aug 2015
“He doesn’t even look like a writer.” Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig must be compelled to write together for the rest of their careers; I’m talking limited outside solo projects and certainly no other collaborators. These two consistently approach genius when they sit down to write a screenplay. Mistress America isn’t as fresh as 2013’s Frances Ha due to the not quite loveable main character, but the way it serves up delightful one-liners and puts together one of the year’s greatest scenes is another triumph for Baumbach and Gerwig.
“I’m an autodidact; that word is one of the words I self taught myself.” Greta Gerwig movie characters exist on a slippery precipice between authentic Greta and pretentious Greta. With just a slip of a single syllable, Greta may easily slide into irritating pretension. This is what happened in 2012’s Damsels in Distress but was avoided altogether in Frances Ha. In Mistress America, Gerwig’s flighty character, Brooke, is purposefully written to carry on airs and overtly downgrade perceived lesser intellectual mortals. Just check out that autodidact line, a line Brooke utters with complete sincerity expecting wonderment and praise from her audience.
“I’m an autodidact; that word is one of the words I self taught myself.” Greta Gerwig movie characters exist on a slippery precipice between authentic Greta and pretentious Greta. With just a slip of a single syllable, Greta may easily slide into irritating pretension. This is what happened in 2012’s Damsels in Distress but was avoided altogether in Frances Ha. In Mistress America, Gerwig’s flighty character, Brooke, is purposefully written to carry on airs and overtly downgrade perceived lesser intellectual mortals. Just check out that autodidact line, a line Brooke utters with complete sincerity expecting wonderment and praise from her audience.
“It’s like you’re at a party and you don’t know anybody, but you feel that way all the time.” Tracy (Lola Kirke, 2014's Gone Girl) is a confused and lonely freshman at Barnard College in New York City. Tracy's New York expectations and reality did not meet in the middle. Her roommate is passively hostile, she did not fall right into a new group of friends, and the literary society she set her sights on does not deem her worthy of membership. Tracy's mom is engaged to Brooke’s dad so the two girls, roughly 12 years apart in age, strike up a friendship where Tracy fawns over Brooke’s bohemian Times Square lifestyle and Brooke imparts a flow of usually contradictory life wisdom.
“There is no cheating when you’re 18. You should all be touching each other all the time.” Brooke runs into a rough patch putting together investors for a trendy Williamsburg restaurant she wants to open that will serve food but also cut hair and function as whatever idea suddenly pops into her haphazard head. Brooke, Tracy, Tracy’s friend Tony (Matthew Shear, 2015's While We're Young), and Tony’s jealous and suspicious girlfriend, Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas-Jones), road trip to Greenwich, Connecticut to both ask Dylan (Michael Chernus, 2013's Captain Phillips), Brooke’s rich ex-boyfriend, for money and confront Mamie Claire (Heather Lind), a nemesis from Brooke’s past whom she accuses of stealing her ideas, her boyfriend, and her cats.
“There’s nothing I don’t know about me; that’s why I can’t do therapy.” The scene unfolding at Dylan’s house knocked my socks off. Nobody there knows everybody else yet the group takes it all in stride. A pregnant women’s book club discusses Faulkner, someone asks if anyone knows how to make an apple bong, Mamie Claire and Dylan openly argue about the state of their relationship and the desire to have a child, and Brooke gives her restaurant pitch. The chaos abruptly halts and all eyes and ears laser beam onto Tracy when a a short story she wrote based on Brooke is revealed; a not entirely flattering portrait.
“I’ll probably end up doing something depressing, but young.” Using Brooke as inspiration, Tracy’s writing catapults up a couple talent tiers, but at what cost? The fallout from Tracy’s story concludes the epic climactic scene and gracefully kicks off the closing action. The audience may agree with Tracy’s insights concerning Brooke but who among us would want a half friend/half protégé critiquing our standing in the world, especially a maudlin liberal arts school creative writer. Mistress America is Tracy’s story but any scene Brooke inhabits takes it away from Tracy shoving her into the background to observe and report.
“It’s weird someone really into rocks can be so into Jesus.” There are similarities between Brooke and Gerwig’s previous character, Frances. Yet, their personalities diverge just enough to make Brooke not too palatable and definitely someone you do not want to sit with during any meal long enough to require waiters. Mistress America is less joyful and cathartic as Frances Ha and it shies away from the more mundane and weighty issues Baumbach’s earlier film this year confronted in While We’re Young. Baumbach pulls off a rare one-two film punch this year, both of them high caliber and fascinating. Now, as long as Baumbach and Gerwig realize cinema needs them to work together, we’re all going to be ok.
Comment Box is loading comments...
