Writer-director Noah Baumbach and actress Greta Gerwig last joined forces as co-screenwriters for Frances Ha, a delightful New York tale that impeccably captured the life and spirit of the modern single girl in the big city. They’re back with Mistress America and this is less about one woman’s search for love than a female’s search for camaraderie… and how rare is that on screen?!
Lola Kirke is Tracy, a Barnard College freshman who is feeling a bit lost in the metropolis of New York. At the suggestion of her mother, she looks up Brooke (Gerwig), a woman who will soon become her step sister. Brooke is a seasoned New Yorker, a woman in her 30s who seems to have it all together — a boyfriend, a restaurant in the making and best of all… a knowledge of the ins and outs of Manhattan that has escaped Tracy.
Tracy is immediately taken with Brooke. In a classic New York-set movie comedy manner, these characters talk at each other instead of to each other. For some, that may be frustrating to watch. But for The Movie Mensch, it is an utter delight. This is how many New Yorkers converse, and clearly Manhattan veterans Baumbach and Gerwig are writing what they know.
The script they penned truly moves at a fast pace that reflects life in the Big Apple. The characters that the co-screenwriters have crafted are rich, full bodied and multi-dimensional. They even took the time to create periphery souls that enrich the plot instead of detracting from it, as lessor screenwriters may have done.
In some ways, Mistress America feels like a tale of two movies. It’s a New York story, through and through, but in the third act, all of our main characters head out to Greenwich, Connecticut.
The final third of the film feels like a tribute to the madcap/screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s and Baumbach and Gerwig just nail it. The entire film’s ensemble is there, and if the first two-thirds of the film felt like the dialogue was fast and furious, better buckle up for the final third. It also feels like some of the best theatrical works we’ve seen where it seems like cast members are coming and going on and off the stage with such a rapid repartee that the audience has to be on their game to keep up. And if their attention is attuned, they are rewarded with smartly crafted laugh-a-minute mayhem.
Tracy may not get all the answers she is looking for from Brooke. The latter is a potential mentor, sisterly soul that eventually slides into the straight friend mode as Tracy finds her own footing in Manhattan and Brooke battles her own demons that shows us she is not so worthy of the pedestal that Tracy put her on.
Mistress America also shows us why we adore independent cinema versus the Hollywood movie making machine.
Don’t get us wrong, we adore the studio system movies, but Mistress America would have ended a completely different way had it been produced by a Hollywood major. In independent cinema, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, our characters rarely get what they want, but always and delightfully get what they need.
Grade: B+