Noah Baumbach‘s “Frances Ha” seemingly came out of nowhere to charm viewers at Telluride and Toronto last fall.
The Brooklyn-born director, whose previous films include “Kicking and Screaming,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Margot at the Wedding,” made the made the movie quietly, co-writing it with his “Greenberg” leading lady Greta Gerwig and filming it in luminous black and white on the streets and in the subways and apartments of New York City.
The film follows Gerwig’s title character, a 27-year-old aspiring dancer who’s never quite gotten her life together; by turns funny, sad, touching and cringe-inducing, it approaches the mess that Frances has made with what TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde described as “an optimism and empathy … that feels genuine and earned.”