What is it about New York and the amount of great films made there?

Have we become so used to seeing it that it feels like home on film?
How come no cool films come out of London in the same way that they do from the big Apple?

Greta Gerwig plays the titular heroine as a 27 year old dancer living with her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner). When Sophie decides to move out Frances has to come to terms with growing up and struggles to find her place in the world.

Noah Baumbach directs this lovely indie film that really charms and shows us Frances at this juncture in her life. The existential crisis of an artist trying to scratch a living out while maintaining some hold on her dream.

The comparisons to Girls and Woody Allen will be coming in thick and fast but this manages to retain its own identity. Like Hannah in Girls, Frances is in a state of growth; her 20-somethings coming to terms with the realities of the world and it uses the beautiful monochromatic look of NYC in Allen’s classic ‘Manhattan’.
Adam Driver and Michael Esper (both from Girls) as her roommates bring two interesting likeable characters to life. Mickey Sumner adds dynamic and drama to their friendship and Frances’ mum is played well by Gerwig’s real life mother Christine Gerwig.

Greta Gerwig imbues Frances with just the perfect amount of kookiness and charm. She also wrote the screenplay with Baumbach and is clearly a talent to watch out for.

Funny, charming and with just the right amount of pathos thrown in to make it a refreshing look at being an artist in your twenties in New York.

Now let’s see one made in London without the faux gangsters about an artist doing what they can. That’d be one to look forward to.

3.6/5

BUY THE BLU-RAY DVD HERE

DOWNLOAD THE FILM ON iTUNES HERE