681 Frances Ha

[Black Hat]

Have you seen the film? How about Greta Gerwig's other films? She's a lot closer in coordination & creativity to Lena Dunham than Lavant.

[warren oates]

Well, Kirkinson, if you haven't seen Holy Motors or Boy Meets Girl or any number of other films where Lavant's animal grace of movement is on display then I only have seven words for you:

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"This is the Rhythm of the Night."

[Kirkinson]

I didn't say (and most certainly didn't mean to imply) anything negative about Denis Lavant, who is at least a demigod among mortals. And if some hypothetical film tried to make me believe that Greta Gerwig was a better dancer than Denis Lavant, I would certainly have trouble with that. However:

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This film doesn't really present Frances as an especially great choreographer, and the events of the film certainly don't suggest she's a particularly great dancer. The end of the film merely shows her presenting a very modest, stripped-down, possibly amateur performance for a small audience (made up mostly of people she knows) while she works in the office for a living. That seems well within the realm of believability to me.

[Matt]

"Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach talk about their new movie [Frances Ha] and falling in love."

[Black Hat]

Wait is it just me or is Baumbach in that video discussing the running to modern love scene as if it was his own idea without mentioning Carax?

[Zot!]

Wait is it just me or is Baumbach in that video discussing the running to modern love scene as if it was his own idea without mentioning Carax?

The interview was edited, but yeah, it sounded like he was discussing it as though he'd been thinking about this brilliant idea for years, and was finally able to implement it. I haven't seen the film, but I assume she doesn't turn cartwheels and tip over a Peugeot. I find both of them to be resonably likeable artists, but man are they crushing bores.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Yup. "I've always wanted to earn in a movie a kind of moment where you could do something that just felt good."

Go with your gut, man. That's instinctive filmmaking.

[zedz]

Good lord, so that scene is all of a sudden actually more obnoxious than I initially thought. [/shudder]

[swo17]

We don't see the question being asked--perhaps it wouldn't have been germane to bring up Carax? For example: "That was such a feelgood moment in the film. What made you decide to have a moment like that?" Nothing in his answer definitively says "This was an original idea that I had," just that it was a feelgood moment, and that he thought that the character had earned such a moment. He's already acknowledged before that the Carax scene was an influence.

NB: I haven't seen the film yet.

[Matt]

NB: I haven't seen the film yet.

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She gets impaled on a spike at the very end of that scene.

[zedz]

Swo: whatever the circumstances, that interview confirms my suspicion that this scene in the film was intended to be a privileged, transcendent moment, and the fact that he just nicked something that worked in another film makes this as much of a cheat as the odious co-option of the 'dancing plastic bag' to signify transcendence in the ghastly American Beauty. They're the antithesis of 'earned' moments, and if Baumbach isn't up front about the borrowing when he's asked about that scene then he's just disingenuously basking in somebody else's glory. Which is not a class move.

[swo17]

Was the dancing plastic bag scene in AB taken from another movie?

[Gregory]

This excerpt from IndieWire covers the whole thing and is pretty amusing to boot.

[Fierias]

Was the dancing plastic bag scene in AB taken from another movie?

Some folks think it was lifted wholesale from Nathaniel Dorsky's 1998 short Variations.

[knives]

Now if only some Dorsky could be available to the public.

[rwiggum]

Swo: whatever the circumstances, that interview confirms my suspicion that this scene in the film was intended to be a privileged, transcendent moment, and the fact that he just nicked something that worked in another film makes this as much of a cheat as the odious co-option of the 'dancing plastic bag' to signify transcendence in the ghastly American Beauty. They're the antithesis of 'earned' moments, and if Baumbach isn't up front about the borrowing when he's asked about that scene then he's just disingenuously basking in somebody else's glory. Which is not a class move.

You're confusing "privileged" with "happy." I just don't buy the most common complaints against this film. Most of the people I've talked to who hate the film see it as condoning Frances' naive worldview, when I don't understand how someone could see the end of that film and think Baumbach was giving the thumbs-up to how Frances was behaving throughout most of it. Just because Frances is caught up in her own charms doesn't mean the audience (or any of the other characters) are asked to be. We're certainly asked to see her as sympathetic, and we're meant to root for her, but less in the way of "I hope things turn out okay for this poor character," and more "I hope she can get her act together and find a more lasting happiness."

Also, you seem to be mistaking "earned" as Baumbach "earning' the right to include the scene, whereas in the context he means that he wanted the film to earn a big, happy giddy moment like that, which in my mind it did.

Frankly, all of this holier-than-though outrage is absurd. What makes this a "theft" and not an "homage," particularly with how directly it quotes the original source material? Is there some threshold for how widely seen the original film must be?

[phantomforce]

I just skimmed through some of the comments and mentioned peoples mention of comparisons/influences of godard, rohmer, etc., and rooting for an unlikeable character and wanted to chime in on a Q&A with Gerwig at the premiere that I saw (Baumbach was not present) She shed a bit of light on a few things. She mentioned that the script was originally written via email back and forth using scenes and ideas her and Baumbach had been emailing each other for a few years that they wanted to implement into a very simple story about a girl, not much different from Gerwig herself, living in NYC. She said that the only real influence they had was wanting to make Woody Allen's Manhattan for their generation, both in style and structure, and present NYC as a character. Frances' main obstacle. She didn't go too deep into what her character is all about, but it was obvious that the character is loosely based on her life and she didn't want it to be anyone special or sympathetic. Just a lazy, not particularly talented or special girl, living in the city and not necessarily putting any effort into anything other than getting people to like her.

Someone in the Q&A asked about the use of Modern Love (and Hot Chocolate) and she just simply said they were on the list of songs they could license and they had just really liked the energy of them and thought they were obscure and cool enough to work and be iconic (Pretty sure she thought they were obscure, which is funny).

Anyway, I personally see the film as more of a stylized, try hard art house version of Our Idiot Brother.
I still liked it, probably more so cause she seemed sweet, shy, quirky and almost autistic in her Q&A and I'd much rather see her on film over Lena Dunham any day.

[Zot!]

Frankly, all of this holier-than-though outrage is absurd. What makes this a "theft" and not an "homage," particularly with how directly it quotes the original source material? Is there some threshold for how widely seen the original film must be?

I'm not sure if everybody has a problem with the "homage" itself, but, its actual worth is a different subject. However, there are now two interviews quoted here, where they are asked about the scene, and they formulate an extended response that makes no mention that it is a direct lift from another film, and they instead talk about their own brilliance. It is just weird, to the point where I start to think that they don't admit anything for fear of legal action.

[Black Hat]

She said that the only real influence they had was wanting to make Woody Allen's Manhattan for their generation, both in style and structure, and present NYC as a character. Frances' main obstacle.

The only thing this movie had in common with Manhattan was that it was shot in black and white. The more I've read/heard these two speak about their film the more I'm starting to hate it. Wow just wow.

Someone in the Q&A asked about the use of Modern Love (and Hot Chocolate) and she just simply said they were on the list of songs they could license and they had just really liked the energy of them and thought they were obscure and cool enough to work and be iconic (Pretty sure she thought they were obscure, which is funny).

No. Every time you're asked about this sequence the first thing you say is "Well there's actually a scene in this little French movie from the 80s called Mauvais Sang..."

To be fair I went back to the piece that accompanied that awful video and it does appear that Baumbach did mention it but it was edited out.

Parker played a clip of “Frances Ha,” of Gerwig, to David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” running and dancing through Chinatown, and a clip from the 1999 Claire Denis film “Beau Travail,” of Denis Lavant dancing frenetically, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Isn’t that the best thing you’ve ever seen?” Gerwig said.

“For people who have seen ‘Beau Travail’—that clip is related to the movie, but it’s also its own thing,” Baumbach said. “And it’s related to this clip in ‘Mauvais Sang’ where he runs, and ‘Holy Motors,’ the accordion thing…. I’ve always wanted in a movie to earn something that just felt good. Like an expression of the character, but also a timeout to feel good. Like in a pop song, where they say ‘Break it down’—they do some other thing, and come back.”

Now I think he's being a bit disingenuous calling it 'related' but at least he did mention it.

[Zot!]

Now I think he's being a bit disingenuous calling it 'related' but at least he did mention it.

Thanks, I think that's sufficient mention in that case, as both him and Gerwig seem ridiculously aloof in general.

I once saw Atom Egoyan speak, and he was another dude who was just dull as dishwater, yet I don't think his movies reflect that.

[Black Hat]

Thanks, I think that's sufficient mention in that case, as both him and Gerwig seem ridiculously aloof in general.

Even that's understating it.

[zedz]

Frankly, all of this holier-than-though outrage is absurd. What makes this a "theft" and not an "homage," particularly with how directly it quotes the original source material? Is there some threshold for how widely seen the original film must be?

Homages can be witty, on-point and intertextually intelligent, or they can be neutral, bland and pointless, or they can be obnoxious and counter-productive. It all depends on context.

I quite liked Frances Ha overall, but I think the big problem with the borrowing in this film (and in American Beauty), is that it pertains to a moment that the film itself asserts to be privileged and special (hence the call-back at the end of the film). If any moments in a film need to be earned, and not just shanghaied, it's moments of transcendence like these. The intertextuality adds nothing to the moments in question (in fact, it's just a distraction, and the filmmakers are obviously hoping that nobody notices, given their interview behaviour), and both instances are artistically and technically inept in comparison to the sequences they're aping - they're simply limply parasitic.

It's like if a film depended on establishing that one of its characters was a great songwriter and rather than do the hard work of showing us the songwriting process or commissioning a great new song to put into her mouth, they instead shot a scene in which she picks up a guitar and shows a friend the new song she just wrote, and it's a mediocre cover of 'Highway 61 Revisited'. Sure, the film has technically 'proven' that the character can 'write' a great song, but this simply reveals that the filmmakers are lazy and cynical at the moment when they really needed to deliver the goods themselves.

[colinr0380]

Or if a silent film used a music cue from Vertigo for its transcendent moment?

[matrixschmatrix]

As much as I disagree with Zedz here- I think the moment works within the context of the film, and I'm not terribly concerned about the motivations or thoughts behind dropping it in- it does sound ironically as though one could place the adult Baumbauch into the place of his The Squid in the Whale alter ego, taking credit for a Pink Floyd song on the grounds that it felt like something he could have written.

[zedz]

Or if a silent film used a music cue from Vertigo for its transcendent moment?

Touché!