Frances Ha – Bitch Flicks

‘Mistress America’: Passing The Bechdel Test All The Way Through

I didn’t expect Gerwig and Baumbach together to create in the second film (‘Frances Ha’ was the first) the two offscreen romantic partners have written in which Gerwig plays the lead and Baumbach directs, a movie that (in spite of its terrible title) is one of the delights of this summer: ‘Mistress America’.

I haven’t seen a movie directed by Noah Baumbach since The Squid and the Whale, a film that made me hate every critic who praised it and made me mistrust any person who said, “I liked it.” For the past decade he has been one of the filmmakers whose career infuriates me; his output makes me think of all the more deserving work (much of it from women) which hasn’t been funded

I first took notice of Greta Gerwig when she was in the execrable Whit Stillman film Damsels in Distress. Although I walked out at the halfway point of a preview screening (past a standing figure in the dark by the doorway whom I now recognize was Stillman himself). I could see Gerwig’s talent underneath the ridiculously mannered dialogue and stilted action. I didn’t expect Gerwig and Baumbach together to create in the second film (Frances Ha was the first) the two offscreen romantic partners have written in which Gerwig plays the lead and Baumbach directs, a movie that (in spite of its terrible title) is one of the delights of this summer: Mistress America.

The protagonist, Tracy (played by Lola Kirke: sister of Girls’ Jemima Kirke: I wondered why she looked so familiar) is in her first semester at Barnard in New York City and is having trouble finding the fun and stimulation college life–and New York–is supposed to be brimming with. Her dorm-mate alternates between chastising her and making fun of her (much more realistic than Boyhood‘s dorm-mate, embarrassed but politely deferential when she walked into her own room and found her roommate’s brother in bed with his girlfriend) and Tracy falls asleep in one of her literature classes–which leads to her making her first college friend, Tony (Matthew Shear) who surreptitiously wakes her. The two of them share writing ambitions and commiserate over screwdrivers in his room when they both have stories rejected by the campus literary magazine. But when he gets a girlfriend, Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) Tracy finds herself alone again, and her mother suggests she call Brooke (Gerwig) the 30-year-old daughter of the man the mother is engaged to marry.

MistressParty — The two have a night that is full of everything Tracy feels she’s been missing

Brooke meets Tracy in the chaotic, tourist-ridden Times Square where Brooke has an apartment. She explains,”I got off the bus from Jersey. I thought this was the cool place to live.” The two have a night that is full of everything Tracy feels she’s been missing: they first have a good, cheap, dinner, get backstage passes for a band who invite Brooke to join them onstage (she makes out with the bass player at the afterparty while Tracy looks on). Brooke and Tracy dance and talk, not about boyfriends (except very briefly) but about their own ambitions: Brooke cobbles together a living with interior decorating, a little tutoring and as the teacher of a spin class, but she also has concrete plans to open a restaurant. After that first night (when Tracy crashes on the couch in Brooke’s apartment) they spend time together throughout the semester, which helps Tracy come out of her shell.
Brooke doesn’t just have cool friends and know the right places to go (not to mention the savvy to find a place in the middle of Times Square where she can live by herself for not much money) but is also hilariously, gloriously opinionated. When she’s caught on camera kissing the band’s bass player she says, “Must we document ourselves all the time? Must we?”

When an old high school classmate confronts Brooke in a bar about her treatment of her when they were younger, Brooke is dismissive, saying that she doesn’t care what the woman thinks of her–and the woman shouldn’t care either. In the middle of a confrontation between Tony, a jealous Nicolette and Tracy, Brooke says, “There’s no cheating when you’re 18, you should all be touching each other all the time.”

MistressAl0ne — The real revelation here is Lola Kirke, who, as Tracy, starts off unsure of herself but accrues confidence at a record pace.

Tracy writes the title short story, revolving around a very lightly fictionalized Brooke, “Claudia” which contains some truths that Tracy would never say to her face, an interesting development considering Baumbach wrote The Squid and The Whale about his own parents–and his portrait of them was not a flattering one. But Tracy’s story seems far too knowing and polished for an 18-year-old college student to have written: Gerwig and Baumbach missed an opportunity to parody a faux-sophisticated writing style as we hear Tracy read parts of the story as the film’s voiceover. Tracy also becomes less hesitant to express her opinions off the page: before she met Brooke , when Tony asked for “notes” on his story she had none, though he had plenty of suggestions for hers. Afterward she tells him he should stop trying for humor in his writing, because he doesn’t have a sense of humor in real life. At a later point he says to her, “You used to be so nice,” reminding us that, especially in describing young women “nice” is another way of saying “unformed”, “overly polite” or “afraid to say what she’s really thinking.”

I kept waiting for this film to go terribly wrong. The movies in which a younger man gloms onto an older one as an inspiration or role model usually show the older man has some great flaw, and free-living, fun women like Brooke in films (not just narrative ones) are usually punished, so I wondered if she would turn out to be a compulsive liar (since a lot of what she claims seems to be far-fetched) a drug addict or would have an untreated bipolar disorder and we would see her depressive side of in the latter half of the film. But Brooke’s downfall (which is more like a reckoning) doesn’t lie within herself but within the changes New York and other large cities have undergone in the past two or three decades. At one time someone like Brooke could make her way with nothing but ideas and ambition, but now young creative types and the places they like to hang out are at the mercy of the very rich, the only people who can afford to live in great swaths of those cities. The real-life restaurant where Brooke and Tracy have their first dinner closed one of their locations, unable to make a profit in today’s high-rent Manhattan.

Gerwig has, with Baumbach, written a role that she was born to play: her slightly spacy delivery serves as a disguise for Brooke’s razor-sharp observations. When a wealthy patron tells her that she’s funny and doesn’t know it, she corrects him, “”I know I’m funny. I know everything about myself.” But the real revelation here is Lola Kirke, who, as Tracy, starts off unsure of herself but accrues confidence at a record pace. In some ways, Tracy, with her brown shoulder-length hair in bulky, unflattering, outdated sweaters (which may be Baumbach reaching back to his own college years, the way the soundtrack includes familiar ’80s synth pop) is much more ordinary and natural than the young women we’re used to seeing in film but when she smiles and her eyes gleam at her newfound naughtiness, she burns a hole in the screen.

By the end both women have come into their own in a way films rarely acknowledge women do: the closest example I can think of is An Education but the focus in that film was on only one character. I would have liked to see this film explore the characters’ sexuality a little more: Tracy says (in the voiceover) that she’s “so in love” with “Claudia” and their chemistry together does seem to teeter to the non-platonic, though they never even kiss. Still I can’t complain when not just one but both of the main women characters end up single—and happy in their independence. When you leave the theater you’ll be smiling too.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Female Friendship: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Female Friendship Theme Week here.

Pretty Little Friendships by Victor Kirksey-Brown

I don’t know if the writers portray this type of friendship and steer away from many of the harmful female friend tropes on purpose, or if it’s just because there’s no way to fit them in with all the other crazy shit that’s going on, but the strong and positive friendship these girls share is one of the reasons I enjoy Pretty Little Liars.

“I’m a Veronica”: Power and Transformation Through Female Friendships in Heathers by Alize Emme

A snappy dark comedy set in a high school bubble, Heathers touches on difficult subjects including murder and suicide, and nonchalantly addresses major social issues like female friendship and power. The friendships we are introduced to steer every aspect of the story as it progresses and bring us into a world where female characters aren’t just cardboard cutouts but multidimensional, seriously flawed, and sinfully interesting young women.

It Takes Two for Friendship by Laura Money

To me, this movie is all about a deep female friendship. Yes, it is a bit narcissistic on the surface – instantly falling in love with someone who looks just like you – but it really captures the essence of friendship, connection, and trust. Alyssa and Amanda realise that they look alike on their first meeting but soon understand that they are also both deeply unsatisfied with particular elements in their lives.

“She’s My Best Friend”: Friendship and the Girls of Teen Wolf by Andrea Taylor

The girls of Beacon Hills, especially Allison and Lydia, are loyal, dedicated friends. They help each other out and they encourage each other. They stand up for each other. They’re best friends with all the complexities that relationship implies. There are better, or at least more consistent, examples in media to turn to, but the perfect moments of female friendship in Teen Wolf mean a lot to me.

You’ll Never Walk Alone: Heavenly Creatures and the Power of Teenage Friendship by Caroline Madden

Peter Jackson shows the girls interacting and playing in these worlds. “The Fourth World” is a beautiful garden. Borvonia is a dark and delightfully wicked world of castle intrigue and courtly love. Seeing the girls in the worlds they’ve created demonstrates the extent of the fantasies and the pleasures their imaginative and playful friendship brings. Pauline and Juliet have an intense friendship; they don’t want anyone to stand in their way of spending time together or stop the joy that it brings for them.

Why This Bitch Loves the B— by Mychael Blinde

I avoided Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23 for quite a while; at a cursory Netflix glance it looked like anti-feminist tripe featuring catty women pitted against each other in a false dichotomy of “nice” and “bitch.” Then I watched it.

I could not have been more wrong.

The Queer Female Friendship of Frances Ha by Sarah Smyth

For Frances Ha is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of Frances Ha is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

I Married a Monster: Female Friendship in The Other Woman by Chantell Monique

Instead of hating and seeing each other as competition, the women form a bond, increasing their woman-power. Kate decides that she wants to make Mark pay for his unfaithfulness saying, “I want him to have to start over,” but she’s afraid she doesn’t have the killer instincts to do it. Her new friends step in, telling her that she does and that if they work together, they can get their revenge.

In Spite of Mean Girls: The Radical Vision of Pretty Little Liars by Jessica Freeman-Slade

In her bestselling collection ‘Bad Feminist,’ Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion: Bosom Buddies Against The World by Emma Kat Richardson

While there’s quite a bit that’s frivolous about Romy and Michele – the film’s tagline is “The Blonde Leading the Blonde” – there is also, much more importantly, the heartwarming love story at the film’s creamy center. But this love has nothing to do with the complications and disappointments that romantic relationships can bring; rather, it’s what the Greeks called agape, or a deeply spiritual, passionate love between intimate friends.

We’re All for One, We’re One for All in A League of Their Own by Rhianna Shaheen

At the end, many of the league’s players reunite to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Old friendships rekindle and emotions soar. After following these women through what must have been the best time they ever had in their youth it is refreshing to see authentic portrayals of them as older women. It feels like their lives are unfolding before my eyes.

Walking and Talking With Non-Toxic Women Friends by Ren Jender

A short clip at the beginning of writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s first film, 1996’s Walking and Talking, lets us know that Amelia (Catherine Keener) and Laura (Anne Heche) have been friends since adolescence. Both are in their 30s and living in New York City–Laura with her boyfriend Frank, and Amelia alone in the sort of sunlit airy apartment someone with her job, even in a pre-gentrified New York (which, like many films from then and now is also mysteriously bereft of people of color), would never be able to afford.

Practical Magic: Sisters as Friends, Mirrors by Olivia London-Webb

This is why I love this movie. I have two real sisters in my life. One born and one chosen. I have strong powerful women everywhere I look–my friends, my mother, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law. I would go through hell for them. They would go through hell for me. What we are more than anything else are each other’s mirrors.

Martyrs: Female Friendships Can Be Bloody Complex by Dierdre Crimmins

Often in feminist criticism female friendships are discussed as a great barometer for the authenticity of the female characters. Strong bonds and healthy interactions serve the dual purpose of highlighting positive female roles and for showing the many dimensions of women as whole persons. I propose that in order to continue the push to show women as well-developed characters we also need representations of flawed female friendships.

St. Trinian’s: Girlish Wiles and Cunning Friendships by Bethany Ainsworth-Cole

Now whilst this seems like an odd collection of friendships, it is an important selection of lessons. It fosters the idea that girls working together will always be better than scheming men, and will always sort things out even if they do need help. Girls are fearless: willing to steal, blow up iron bars, fight back against creeps, and speak out. And most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes. The girls also enjoy themselves doing it.

Best Frenemies Forever by Emanuela Betti

Can women be friends? Or, most importantly, can two women who share the same man be friends? The depiction of genuinely loving and caring female friends has found its way onto many movies and TV shows, but when it comes to the idea of a more complex situation—the “frenemies”—it’s harder to find characters that do it justice. There is a shallow notion that when two women want the same man, they turn into hair-pulling, catfighting brats.

The First Wives Club and First World “Feminism” by Amanda Lyons

But the focus on “getting everything” was a little hard to stomach from women living in huge condos in the heart of New York with an interior designer on their payroll. Somehow it felt like the message was getting a little lost in the middle of all the high-society hob-nobbing – there was nothing particularly universal about it, and any feminism that was being communicated was certainly of a rarefied kind that most of us wouldn’t be able to access.

Scarlett and Melanie: The Ultimate BFFs by Jennifer Hollie Bowles

Regardless of how psychological or interpretive you want to get with Scarlett and Melanie’s friendship, it serves as an invaluable example for how women can accept, value, and interact with one another.

Seed & Spark: Female Friendship On Screen–Art Imitating Life by Liz Cardenas Franke

But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?

Homegirls Make Some Noise: Antônia and the Magic of Black Female Friendships by Lisa Bolekaja

Classism, racism, sexism, and colorism are very real in the world of Antônia. But the film shows us a fresh narrative of Black women succeeding despite living in a slum, despite poverty, despite violence and all the ills that pervade real life. For just a moment, I’m able to watch Black women who are free to be themselves. They don’t have to unpack external baggage based on a checklist of intersections involving their skin color, social status, or gender. That is a rare treat. It’s their tight friendship that sustains them. Music is friendship, and friendship is music.

Kamikaze Girls: When a Lolita Meets a Yanki by Jasmine Sanchez

While their connection doesn’t form immediately, especially in Momoko’s case, the two eventually are able to form a close bond. When they first meet they are both taken aback by one another’s exterior–Momoko is horrified to be dealing with a yanki and Ichiko thinks that Momoko is a little girl. Once she finds out they are the same age Ichiko admits to her folly, “I shouldn’t judge by appearances,” which Momoko counters with, “But appearances says everything.” This sets up their dynamic for the rest of the film as Ichiko is willing to look beyond, while Momoko prefers the superficial.

Julia: A Portrait of Heroic Friendship in an Age of Darkness by Rachael Johnson

Although peppered with flashbacks to the women’s childhood and youth, Julia is set during their formative academic and professional years. The film chronicles the women’s personal and political lives in the decade that saw the rise of Fascism. We witness how the fight against those dark forces transforms both friends.

9 to 5: The Necessity of Female Friendships at Work by Deb Rox

Like the three fates, the friends conjure a life-altering force by listening to each other, by laughing, by being friends. The scenes where they envisioned the demise of their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss start to play out for real in madcap, accidental, and intentional ways. As the fabric unrolls, each woman experiences being supported by the other two and feels compelled to help her friends. In their confusions, cover-ups, and retribution schemes, Violet, Doralee, and Judy knit together a solid friendship where each character finds strength and support. And manage to avoid getting caught. It’s the little things.

“I Love You More Than My Luggage”: Female Friendships and Fertility by Joanne Bardsley

The implication of the relative richness of the representations of female friendships at either end of the fertile period is that at these times the female is free to explore relationships which are not sexual but during the fertile period the female’s most important relationships are sexual. This is damaging and dangerous as it is a structural reinforcement of the objectification of women. We only see our friendships represented on screen when we are no longer of use to the patriarchy, when we have either yet to serve our function or have already performed our reproductive duties. It is only in the margins that we are free to pursue our own interests.

Making Sure Female Friendship Films Aren’t Forgotten: Take Care of My Cat by Adam Hartzell

The film is about the evolving friendships of five young South Korean women as they step away from their technical high school into a less certain world. Their degrees of closeness shift as they consider their futures in the face of particular restrictions in work and life opportunities due to gender and class discrimination.

Frances Ha: Chasing Sophie by Rachel Wortherly

In my experience, people who have seen this film often mistake Sophie’s actions as abandoning Frances for her boyfriend, Patch. The fact that it happens differently is a breath of fresh air. Rather, it represents an early point in which audiences experience the divide between Frances and Sophie in physical and emotional aspects. Sophie sees the opportunity to move on and fulfill her dreams, while Frances’ dream is fractured. The story of “us” that precedes this action becomes their separate, respective stories: “the story of Frances” and “the story of Sophie.”

Fearless Friendship! Usagi and Rei by Kathryn Diaz

Growing up isn’t cute. At six or 16 or anywhere in between, figuring out who you are and what your place in the world is isn’t sparkly fun-times. The best you can hope for is to have a real friend to muddle through the worst of it with you, someone who is having just as much of a crazy time as you are, who will run to your defense, give you pep talks when you’re about to face the Dark Kingdom, and shamelessly make fun of you for being such a crybaby after you call her a meanie.

What Now and Then Taught Me About Friendship by Kim Hoffman

Summer has always been a magical time where childhood lingers, and every time I get on a swingset again, or have a hankering for a push pop, or throw on my Now and Then soundtrack, I think of my childhood and feel invigorated with that rush of youth. I think of Taylor and Sara, and a time when we were so eager to make our own adventures. I also think of those four girls from the Gaslight Addition; somehow they affected my life by making me appreciate what it means to be and have a true friend in this wild world.

Reality Bites: A Tale of Two Ladies by Beatrix Coles

While a fun exercise, it’s really just as counter-productive to reduce these two women to their Reality Bites character archetypes as it is pointless. But yet, there is something familiar and soothing in these roles. We want the pretty girl who falls from grace punished, just as we want the girl wearing glasses to have a political point of view and to not be too concerned about whether she has a boyfriend.

Feisty and Heisty: Female Friendship in The First Wives Club by Artemis Linhart

The main characters’ friendship goes way back: a flashback shows the group in college, together with their valedictorian and close friend Cynthia. The four of them vow to be friends forever. This, however, turns out to be easier said than done. After graduation, the four of them lose touch and are only reunited years later, with the occasion being Cynthia’s funeral. After her husband took financial advantage of her and then left her for a younger woman, she commits suicide. At a post-funeral get-together, the three women bond over their own failed marriages and spite for their ex-husbands. Their friendship is rekindled as they decide to settle the score with their exploitative exes.

When Friendships Fray: Me Without You, Not Waving But Drowning, and Brokedown Palace by Elizabeth Kiy

Not all friendships are built to last. Teenage friendships are little romances between two people, tiny beautiful, impossibly fragile things that break apart upon touch or close examination. Just as a true romantic relationship between two unformed people rarely lasts, so often we grow out of our early friendships. Because so much of growing up means developing into a person who can live in the world, films about the ends of friendships can be just as satisfying coming of age stories as the typical narratives of beginnings. Each ending after all, is the beginning of something else.

“We Stick Together”: Rebellion, Solidarity, and Girl Crushes in Foxfire by Jenny Lapekas

In the spirit of Boys on the Side, along with a dose of teen angst, Foxfire is perhaps the most bad ass chick flick ever. Many Angelina Jolie fans are not aware of this 1996 phenomenon, where Angie makes a name for herself as a rebellious free spirit who changes the lives of four young women in New York. Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel by the same name, ‘Foxfire’ is the epitome of girl power and female friendship, a pleasant departure from the competition and spitefulness often portrayed between women characters on the big screen (see Bride Wars and Just Go with It). However, it does seem that Hollywood is catching on as of late, and producing films that cater to a more progressive viewership (see Bridesmaids and The Other Woman). When I first saw Foxfire around 16 years old, I stole the VHS copy from the video store where I worked at the time.

‘Frances Ha’: Chasing Sophie

This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

At first glance, director Noah Baumbach’s seventh film, Frances Ha, also co-written by its star, Greta Gerwig (Frances), can be summed up as the following: 20-something Frances Halladay aimlessly struggles to survive in the harsh climate of New York City, while trying to become a professional dancer and mature into adulthood. While this is the case, the most important aspect is the relationship between Frances and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). In the scope of cinematic female friendships, Frances Ha explores it as a beautiful story of love, loss, and courage.

The film begins with a dizzying montage of Frances and Sophie engaging in behaviors that range from adolescent to intimate. They blissfully play fight, giggle uncontrollably, and have cozy bedroom confessions. They are the epitome of inseparable. At one point, Frances muses, “Tell me the story of us.” Sophie in a nurturing, maternal tone recites their future as a bedtime story. They achieve all their dreams: Sophie successfully becomes a publishing mogul, and Frances a famous modern dance artist. Their lives will be filled with European excursions and honorary degrees–so many honorary degrees.

So far, we are witnessing the familiar trope of sisterhood, support, and unwavering affection that is inherent in similarly themed films such as Steel Magnolias, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or Waiting to Exhale. These women are in love with each another and their friendships can weather the toughest hurdles. However, the quality that separates Frances Ha from the latter two is that men are a backdrop to the friendship, goals, and ambitions of Frances and Sophie. The “story of us” does not include husbands and babies. When men are spoken about, it is usually brief and fleeting. Frances nonchalantly recounts that she and her boyfriend, Dan, have broken up. He wants to move in together, while Frances’ loyalty is to her lease and partnership with Sophie. Frances is not heartbroken. She is not sobbing on the window sill as a soulful R&B song swells in the background. While they love men, men do not dominate their dynamic and neither female is defined by them. At this point, they are one another’s significant other.

This hazy love story takes a turn when Sophie abruptly moves in with another girlfriend in the trendy and more expensive neighborhood of Tribeca. In my experience, people who have seen this film often mistake Sophie’s actions as abandoning Frances for her boyfriend, Patch. The fact that it happens differently is a breath of fresh air. Rather, it represents an early point in which audiences experience the divide between Frances and Sophie in physical and emotional aspects. Sophie sees the opportunity to move on and fulfill her dreams, while Frances’ dream is fractured. The story of “us” that precedes this action becomes their separate, respective stories: “the story of Frances” and “the story of Sophie.”

A friendship that was once whimsical and carefree gives way to passive aggressiveness and tension. Upon Sophie’s move, an irate Frances blasts her over the phone for coveting a tea kettle they bought when moving in together. Yet, at no point does it become Mean Girls. It is absent of “burn books,” idle gossip, or derision. Here begins the angst, confusion, and fear that is familiar when the one constant in our lives changes. Frances is left alone to figure life out by herself. There is no one present to reprimand her for picking at her acne, share a cigarette, or laugh with hysterically as she urinates off a subway platform. Thus begins Frances’ search for companionship.

One of the greatest qualities about this film is that Baumbach and Gerwig, whether consciously or unconsciously, adhere to the “Bechdel test.” While Frances interacts with men, the most dominant male/female scenes being with her newfound roommates Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), it is quite platonic–almost innocent and childlike. When they speak it usually involves her job, Sophie, or her feelings of not being “grown up.” They in turn appreciate her quirkiness and good humor. At this point, we cut to Frances’ sleep being disrupted by Lev and Benji who engage her in a tickle fight. Laughter resounds and all is well again in her world. In typical comedies, when most writers place a female character in this situation, the easy route is to pair Frances with one of the men (likely Benji who makes his attraction for Frances obvious by the film’s end). But this is a different kind of “romantic comedy.” It is a platonic love story between two friends.

Rather, Lev and Benji fill the void of loneliness that pervades sans Sophie. This pattern continues when Frances, unable to afford rent at the guys’ Chinatown apartment, temporarily moves in with Rachel (Grace Gummer), her superior in the dance company. With her, Frances attempts to vainly re-enact the play fights, as Rachel screams “stop” and “ahoy sexy” inside jokes. At this stage Frances is coping with the emptiness of losing someone she dubs “the same person” as well as a professional impasse. Sophie works in publishing and has a significant other. In terms of the “story of us,” these successes, or failures, are not occurring as they imagined, or simultaneously. Their story continues to slip out of their grasp.

It should be noted that Frances Ha accurately depicts patterns in female friendships. Usually in films, women engage in a huge blowout that eventually resolves itself at the end of the film. The heroines usually return to a childhood memory or place from the past that reunites them. Or, in comedies, their resolution comes by way of a ridiculously, over-the-top physical fight. But as previously stated, Frances and Sophie are passive aggressive. Prior to Frances and Sophie’s public bathroom blow-out, a scene in which Frances exclaims, “Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend,” there are quiet moments that led up to this. Sophie makes biting comments to Frances that Frances is still messy. Sophie also makes it clear that Patch is a presence who equally, if not more, knows her on an intimate level.

After their dispute, they don’t speak for a while until Sophie calls Frances to invite her to a party. She and Patch are moving to Japan. While they apologize for their behavior toward each other, Sophie for her passiveness and Frances for her aggression, they’re still unable to tell each other their innermost truths. Frances does not divulge that she did not make it into the company’s Christmas show, while Sophie does not share her apprehensions about getting serious with Patch. This can be interpreted as prideful, or a way to save face, but it is instead a serene moment in which they resolve their issue rather than dwell on the past.

Yet, the most pivotal scenes appear toward the end. At a low point, Frances has now returned to her and Sophie’s alma mater as a residential assistant to make more money, while a newly engaged Sophie and Patch appear at the college’s gala. Upon Sophie and Patch’s brief falling out, Sophie and Frances are reunited. An inebriated Sophie expresses her doubts and fears of growing up while Frances confesses that she loves Patch if Sophie does. They revert to the image in the beginning of the film: cozy twin bed confessions, copious I love yous, and talk of moving back in together. Frances also complies with Sophie’s pet peeve of no socks in bed. All is right again. That is, until sober Sophie leaves Frances in the morning to mend her relationship with Patch. Frances is abandoned yet again, only this time, a barefoot Frances attempts to chase after her to no avail. Looking down at her bare feet on the pavement, Frances realizes she has to stop chasing the past.

Frances and Sophie’s “one night stand” allows them to create their separate moments of courage. Frances finds alternative methods of achieving her success, lives in an apartment by herself, and eventually choreographs her own dance troupe. She learns to be alone, rather than lonely. Sophie, who appeared as the independent one in their friendship, is now co-dependent in her marriage to Patch. She is committing herself to a long-term relationship that is more complicated than moving in with another friend. They’re both comfortable living in their own skin. Yet, they experience a moment Frances describes earlier in the film:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it…but it’s a party…and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining…and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes…but – but not because you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual…but because…that is your person in this life.”

Like Frances and Sophie, our first loves are our best friends. They’re an extension of us so much so, that a proverbial break-up is inherently heartbreaking. It forces us into becoming independent, partake in self-discovery, and recognize that life will take us in different directions. Frances and Sophie’s relationship is fresh because while they are now living separate lives, they still maintain love and respect for each other. The friendship becomes about the present, rather than the past or future. Ultimately their courage lies in knowing that while their roads may diverge, their bond remains as strong as looking across the room and glowing in each other’s happiness.

Rachel Wortherley is a recent graduate of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, television shows, and films. She hopes to gain a doctorate in English literature and become a professional screenwriter.

The Queer Female Friendship of ‘Frances Ha’

For ‘Frances Ha’ is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of ‘Frances Ha’ is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

This guest post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Frances Ha is a love story.

The film opens with a montage of the central couple play-fighting, dancing, reading, cooking, and doing laundry together, which establishes the seemingly blissful and idyllic domestic set-up between the two characters. As the narrative progresses, however, the couple become subject to the usual trials and tribulations of the characters in romantic comedies. Their relationship is complicated by external forces, which becomes intensified by jealousy and miscommunication, before the couple are finally reunited and reconciled.

However, despite the possibility of reducing Frances Ha to a set of generic conventions, to do so is not hugely productive. Firstly, this undermines the charm, intelligence, and self-awareness of the film. Secondly, by only examining Frances Ha in terms of how it upholds generic conventions, we remain unable to see the ways in which the film challenges this very generic set-up. For Frances Ha is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of Frances Ha is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie.

Discussing the friendship between Frances and Sophie in an interview in Sight and Sound magazine, Greta Gerwig claims:

“We never started out saying we were going to make a love story between these two friends but it just emerged in the writing of the scenes. Then we went back and actually beat it out like a romcom: she has the girl, she loses the girl, she tries to make the girl jealous. It’s like a will-they-won’t-they tension to the story but you’re never quite sure what they will or won’t do.”

Co-writing the film with Noah Baumbach, who also directed Frances Ha and is Gerwig’s real-life partner, Gerwig’s comments make clear the intended underlying “romantic” trajectory and generic mapping of the film.

Although the friendship between Frances and Sophie sits within the structure of a conventional romantic narrative, Frances Ha never presents these two women as having an explicitly homosexual relationship. Frances and Sophie never engage in sexual activities with each other, nor share anything other than an asexual bed. Yet, within the heteronormative romcom genre and, indeed, wider Western society, which rigidly privileges the heterosexual, monogamous, and cis-gendered couple, the friendship between Frances and Sophie is figured as distinctly queer. In one moment, Frances even jokes to Sophie that, “we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.”

In “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich writes, “if we consider the possibility…that all women exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify as lesbian or not.” I move away from Rich’s use of the term “lesbian” in favour of the term “queer” as, in this context, the use of “lesbian” reinforces the binary construction of gender and sexuality which, in turn, undermines her proposition of a fluid sexuality. Nevertheless, Rich helpfully dispels the notion of heterosexuality as naturally or essentially given, broadening out the consideration of a fulfilling and satisfying love as going beyond the constraints imposed by rigid heterosexuality. In addition, Rich also demonstrates the way in which Western society’s continual re-iteration of “natural” heterosexuality only serves to reinforce patriarchal interests and perpetuate gender inequality: ‘”The enforcement of heterosexuality for women [is] a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional access.” In this way, through the centrality of the female friendship to the film’s love story, Frances Ha suggests the possibility of women breaking free from the oppressive constraints of heteronormativity and heterosexuality. By suggesting the possibility of finding love, commitment, satisfaction, and fulfilment from female friendship, Frances Ha not only breaks down a construction of sexuality, love, and relationships which privileges patriarchal power, dominance, and authority. It also proposes a future where there is an alternative, or at least coexistence with, the conventional heteronormative “female” script of marriage, children, and a house in the suburbs.

Frances and Sophie lying in bed together indicates their queer, but not homosexual, relationship.

Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together

However, before we proclaim to have arrived at a feminist utopia, and run off into the sunset with our best female friend, Frances Ha makes plain the difficulties and complications faced by these friendships. The film continually presents a dissonance between the Frances and Sophie’s fantasy of the future and the expectations of conventional heteronormativity. These expectations continually impose themselves on Frances and Sophie’s friendship, threatening to destroy this queer alternative of female fulfilment. Near the beginning of the film, as the two women sit in bed together, Frances asks Sophie to “tell me the story of us,” which, within cinema, is the kind of pillow talk that’s reserved for heterosexual couples. Frances says Sophie will be “this awesomely bitchy publishing mogul,” and Sophie says Frances will be “this famous modern dancer.” They will have lovers, no children, and honorary degrees – “so many honorary degrees.” Their fantasy subverts heteronormativity’s conventional trajectory of a woman’s life, with Frances and Sophie privileging economic independence, career and academic success, sexual satisfaction, and, most importantly, their friendship above husbands and children. However, Sophie is also in a conventional, heterosexual, monogamous relationship with Patch (Patrick Heusinger), which continually attempts to destroy Frances and Sophie’s queer friendship. In one poignant moment, Frances says to Sophie, “it’s just, if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you’ll only tell one person and that’ll be Patch, and I’ll never hear about it.” Frances’ anxieties make clear the realities of the heteronormative construction of relationships, which privileges the monogamous and heterosexual couple, causing Frances and Sophie’s relationship to wither in comparison.

Sophie most explicitly represents the conflict between alternative forms of female fulfilment through queer friendships and heteronormativity’s imposed expectations of success and satisfaction. In the end, she does not follow the fantasy that she shares with Frances. More concerned with the outward appearance of success than her own happiness, she gives up her job in a publishing house and, possibly, her financial independence, to move to Tokyo with Patch. Although she writes a travel blog in which, as Frances says, she “looks so happy,” she later reveals to Frances that she wants to leave Patch and Japan. In this confessional scene, Frances hopes to repair their relationship and renew their fantasy claiming, “maybe we’ll move back to New York at the same time and be like women who rediscover themselves after a divorce… We should get apartments close to each other in Brooklyn.” However, this idyllic moment is temporal, and the fantasy never becomes realised in the film as Sophie leaves the next morning to return to her boyfriend. Despite acknowledging her unhappiness, Sophie ends up marrying Patch at the end of the film. Frances Ha, it seems, is deeply pessimistic towards women finding fulfilment and satisfaction within their female friendships so long as heteronormativity continues as the dominant social order.

Sophie and Patch’s conventional romantic relationship poses a continual challenge to Frances and Sophie’s friendship.

Nevertheless, Frances Ha offers the possibility of women finding happiness and fulfilment both within their own terms and within their female friendships. Frances’ success at the end of the film is not in finding a man and getting married, but in choreographing her own show and finding her own place to live. In addition, the film suggests that the friendship between Frances and Sophie may not only continue to exist but to flourish. During a disastrous dinner party, in a moment of disarming honesty, Frances explains what she wants from a relationship:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it. But it’s a party, and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining, and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes, but not because you’re possessive or it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love.”

In the final scene between Frances and Sophie, they look over to each other in a crowded room, catch each other’s eye and flash a goofy smile. In that moment, they both exist within their own alternative dimension. In that fleeting and temporal instant, they exist outside of the heteronormative construction of what constitutes a meaningful and satisfying relationship. In that look, they confirm to each other and to the audience that their relationship, so difficult, complex, challenging, powerful, passionate, and meaningful is one of support, fulfilment, and, ultimately love.

Greta Gerwig’s interview appears in the August 2013 issue of Sight and Sound.

Sarah Smyth recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

The Lifelike, Feminist Choreography of ‘Frances Ha’

Frances Ha movie poster.

Written by Leigh Kolb
Spoilers ahead!

“27 is old.”

Frances Ha is a love letter to that idea–that 27 is old, but is, at the same time, the beginning of everything. For this generation, 27 is at that cusp between youth and adulthood and it is painful, terrifying and full of misery and joy.

The film captures that moment perfectly, and its bare French New Wave style allows the story, which focuses on, in the words of director Noah Baumbach, “That period in your 20s where you’re necessarily having to separate yourself from a kind of romantic idea of yourself,” to be on full display.

In addition to capturing that moment, Frances Ha also has at its center a friendship between two women. It easily passes the Bechdel Test, and was co-written by the actor Greta Gerwig, who plays Frances.

“I’m not messy, I’m busy.”

In an interview, Gerwig says that the film and its focus on evolving relationships and changing is about that “moment when you’re exiting your youth and you really only know it when it’s gone. It doesn’t announce that it’s the last day of youth, it just leaves…” While these kinds of stories are not rare, seeing the focus placed on a woman’s life and female friendship is.

Frances Ha is one of those rare films that makes a feminist’s heart grow three sizes in an hour and a half.

The female protagonist and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), are engaged in the most important relationship on screen. Frances and her boyfriend at the beginning of the film break up (he wants to get cats and for her to move in with him; she wants to keep living with Sophie), and Sophie has a relationship with the kind of guy who wears a ball cap and says, “I have to take a leak,” but the central relationships are Frances and Sophie and Frances and herself.

Frances and Sophie’s friendship is incredibly realistic.

Frances is an aspiring modern dancer (she’s an understudy and teaches dance lessons to children at a dance company), and anyone with minimal knowledge of the dancing profession knows that 27 is likely far too old to have any hope of joining the company, yet Frances hopes. She’s sure that this is the year she will be chosen for the company and at least get to tour.

Sophie moves out to live with an acquaintance in Tribeca, where she’s always wanted to live. Frances haphazardly becomes a roommate to two “rich kid” young men (an artist, Lev, and a writer, Benji, with wealthy parents), and she doesn’t get asked to dance in the Christmas productions, much less be a part of the company. Frances’s life–which hasn’t yet felt like it’s begun–is unraveling.

Frances, Benji and Lev.

When she goes home for Christmas, she lies in a bathtub full of water as her mother pounds on the door: “Frances, how much longer?” she pleads.

The length of her life seems short and long, and the next step is elusive.

Through it all, Frances perseveres. She doesn’t break down, she doesn’t quit moving, even if her moves sometimes feel clunky–and real.

In what’s arguably her lowest moment, when she’s attending a dinner party with her temporary roommate who doesn’t seem to like her, Frances does break–in her own way. She drinks a bit too much and when she learns (from strangers) that Sophie is moving to Japan with her fiance, Frances decides to go to Paris.

Frances dances through the streets to David Bowie.

“Sometimes it’s good to do what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it,” she says. At this moment, she means going to Paris–even on a charge card–and having a worldly experience. It’s disappointing, as most of those experiences that we are “supposed” to have often are. Frances is left feeling empty, and more lost than when she began.

She makes sure to be home on Monday, because the head of the dance company had requested a meeting with her. Frances–charmingly delusional–thinks she’s going to ask her to be a member of the company. Instead, she’s offered an office administration job. Frances says no. She’s not ready to move into that part of her life, where she no longer has that unfettered hope of being who she thought she was going to be.

She returns to her alma mater to be an RA during a summer dance camp (where she discovers she’s not even allowed to take dance classes) and a server for special events. It’s during this experience–the juxtaposition of her life and the college students’ lives, and her being an adult in a place of youthful potential–that something changes. She runs in to a drunk Sophie at a fundraiser. Sophie is belligerent and stays over in Frances’s dorm room. Their roles are reversed that night. Frances seems to have it all together and Sophie is falling apart.

“Your blog looked so happy,” Frances says after Sophie says she’s been miserable and won’t be marrying her fiance. They both had been struggling to do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it, but it’s not working. They must separate themselves from that “romantic idea” they’d had of themselves, their “story of us” that included taking over the world, to move forward.

Frances does so by taking the administrative job at the dance company, and is able to continue choreographing. Her eyes glisten with happiness in the control booth as dancers on stage perform her choreography. As the gorgeous, disjointed dance goes on, the camera pans through the audience, focusing on all of the people in Frances’s life who care about and support her. The company owner compliments her work, gushing over the performance. Frances briefly talks to one of her old roommates, Benji, and it is clear that something might develop between the two of them. But the person she’s “making eyes” at is Sophie, her best friend.

The framing of Frances’s life around a dance career is perfect, because dance is a profession that one ages out of, and it’s so much, on the surface, about performance. Frances, as she perceives herself getting older, feels like she needs to perform to choreography not her own. When she realizes she can make her life work in another way, she’s rewarded.

In an article at Forbes, Dina Gachman notes the importance of Frances’s career trajectory, and the lesson that there’s something in between getting exactly what you think you want or settling for less:

“That doesn’t mean you should meander all over the place without a plan waiting for success to rain down on you, but one of the great things about Frances Ha is that it’s saying: It’s OK that your life and career aren’t picture perfect. Maybe the picture is just different than you imagined.”

In the end, Frances is moving into her own apartment, a sign of success, since her living arrangements have always been cause for stress and uncertainty. She’s able to work and make a living in the dance world. She’s everything she wanted to be, just in a different way.

Frances dancing in a grown-up pencil skirt.

As she goes to put her handwritten name plate onto her mailbox, her name is too long to fit. She folds it neatly, and “Frances Ha” peeks out from the window. She did what she needed to do to make it fit, much like she did with her life. When she does figure out how to make all of the pieces fit, she gets everything she needs and realizes what she wants.

In “Why Frances Ha is the Must-See Feminist Film of the Year,” Imran Siddiquee says,

“While capturing the hilarity, awkwardness and anxiety all of us might face in our late 20s – gaining and losing best friends while pursuing what feels like an increasingly impossible dream – Frances Ha says something very specific about gender. It shows us that women can be messy, graceful, sad, funny, artistic, ambitious and caring all at once. You know, human.”

The sheer humanity on display throughout Frances Ha feels much more groundbreaking than it should. The women and men in the film are not people you aspire to be, but they are people, on some level, who you are and who you know.

After watching the film, I immediately told my best friend she had to watch it. The depiction of female friendship and the muddy misery of the mid-20s was breathtaking. There are so many art-house and Hollywood films that center on men’s coming-of-age stories, and so few about women’s. Frances Ha shows that it can be done, and it can be done well.

That moment when you are in the control booth of your life, which may not look how you thought it would, but it’s just how it’s supposed to be? That’s a great moment.

When a flawed and wonderful woman is having that moment on the big screen? That’s a great moment for all of us.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Where Have All the Women Gone in Movies? by Rebecca Keegan via Los Angeles Times

Lucy Liu: “People See Sandra Bullock in a Romantic Comedy, Not Me” by Jorge Rivas via Colorlines

Lucy Liu Talks Candidly about Racism and Stereotypes in Hollywood by S.E. Smith via XO Jane

My Medical Choice by Angelina Jolie via The New York Times

Angelina Jolie Removed Her Breasts to Save Her Life. Some Fans Wish She Hadn’t. by Amanda Hess via Slate’s Double X

‘Brave’ Creator Blasts Disney for “Blatant Sexism” in Princess Makeover by Paul Liberatore via Marin Independent Journal

Unsurprisingly, Disney Says It’s Not Backing Down on that Merida Redesign by Susana Polo via The Mary Sue

‘Star Trek’s History of Progressive Values — And Why It Faltered On LGBT Crew Members by Devon Maloney via Wired

The Unending Heartbreak of Great Expectations: Why I Can’t Watch The Mindy Project Anymore by Eesha Pandit via Crunk Feminist Collective

The Other Double Standard: On Humor and Racism in Feminism by T.F. Charlton via BlogHer

How ‘Scandal’s Shonda Rhimes Became Disney’s Primetime Savior by Meghan Casserly via Forbes

Women Front ‘Nashville’ Band: On Screen and Off, Female Power Drives the ABC series ‘Nashville’ by Deborah Vankin via Los Angeles Time

Network Axes Fall Hard on Gay Characters by Lesley Goldberg via The Hollywood Reporter

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Pilot Season 2013-2014 by Kendra James via Racialicious

‘Brave,’ ‘Iron Man 3,’ and the Faux Feminism of Armed Women by Scott Mendelson via Forbes

Why ‘Frances Ha’ is the Feminist Must-See Film of the Year So Far by Imran Siddiquee via Miss Representation

The Number of Women in Top-Grossing Movies Hits Five-Year Low. What are Women for in Hollywood? by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

Trailer Roundup: Women-Created Fall TV Shows by Karensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood

Sitcoms are the Golden Land of Feminist TV Characters by Gabrielle Moss via Bitch Media

Stop Policing and and Questioning Beyoncé’s Feminist Credentials by Lauren Rankin via PolicyMic

What have you been reading and/or writing this week?? Tell us in the comments!