Welcome to my column, Colour Me (Dis)Interested (Ha! Isn't it clever?), where I will look at a black-and-white film a week that was filmed in the colour era.
This week, I will be looking at Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha.
Is it fair to call Frances Ha a product of the mumblecore movement in cinema or is it all too, well, professional? Noah Baumbach's examination of culture, early adulthood, and obsessive friendships not only makes for a good, topical debate but a very worthy motion picture. Frances Ha is one of the strongest films to come out in recent years. Heavy on dialogue, characterisation, and the strong, stable topics to examine, this is a thoughtful mediation on what it means to grow up, stay true to your friends, and be self-reliant.
This is basic framework for a story that begins to follow the path of a series of vignettes, focusing on the ups and downs in life, along with those awkward stretches no one really likes to talk about. Baumbach brilliantly captures this through a black and white lens, and allows his actors the freedom to get immersed in their characters with little restrictions in place.
I imagine that the loneliness and slight-depression Frances feels when Sophie leaves her is one many post-college girls will feel when their best girlfriend moves on to bigger and better things and she remains somewhat inert and stuck in her current life position. Baumbach details growing up in Frances Ha not as a choice but as an obligation, which it rightfully is in many regards, but the way he doesn't isn't condescending or superficial, but rather hopeful and endearing.