Favorite Scenes: I Love Frances Ha

One of the great intangibles about being a devoted and sometimes obsessive movie connoisseur is that you are usually able to identify with ease your favorite scene from a new film immediately upon its conclusion. And sometimes, when the stars are perfectly aligned, this scene makes you fall in love with the film long before it ends. So regardless of the denouement, regardless of the 3rd act, regardless of the resolution, the scene is so strong, and says so much about you and the Universe or reality in which you inhabit, the conclusion doesn't matter, because the scene itself was enough. Fortunately, Greenberg Director Noah Baumbach's (The Squid and the Whale) second effort with the uniquely charming Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha, is so good that the film that surrounds this core scene has several near-perfect moments, some are fantastically whimsical, poignant, and at times melancholy  but none have the feeling, the emotion, truth as this one. Off the record, I love Greta Gerwig; she is an odd mash-up of all of the great and former lovers in my life - she possesses all of their bizarre bravado, delicate wit, savvy intellect, and contempt for conformity. Here she perfectly describes what it is TO BE IN LOVE - perfectly articulated by a woman who is not motivateed by a man. This is refreshing as fuck. I fucking love this movie for it represents everything that is missing in the vast majority of American films, women that are both strong, confused, intelligent, happy, sad, uncertain, brave, scared, the gamut. Frances is not identified through her sexuality and this film is not about her trying to find a man to further complete this identification. In fact, this film is almost androgynous in this respect. Most films take the position that a woman only has one if we understand her through the eyes of a relationship-status. Her sexuality must be understood, it must be apparent. Frances Ha takes an almost groundbreaking approach  to this issue by keeping it squarely on the backburner because sexual status doesn't really matter when we are trying to understand who she is. The bullshit pressure many women or films in general feel to complete the standard courtship to coupling ritual is ridiculous. It is persistently misogynistic and dull and creates this impression that a woman's place is to complete this tired, conventional coupling cycle and not grow as an individual. Watch this scene, fall in love with it as I did, and I guarantee you'll fall in love with the movie. It's a beautifully made take on the rites-of-passage and coming-of- age woes of a late-20s dreamer.