A black-and-white portrait of a woman who can't quite land, Frances Ha follows a dancer's understudy through a run of small failures that never quite add up to disaster.
What is Frances Ha about?
Frances is an apprentice at a dance company, not yet a dancer in any way the company recognizes, and she doesn't really have a stable place to live either — bouncing between borrowed rooms and friends' couches across New York. As her closest friendship shifts shape and her career stalls in place, she keeps throwing herself at plans that don't quite work out, watching the odds narrow without ever fully giving up on them. The film follows that stretch of her twenties less as a single crisis than as a string of minor course corrections, each one slightly humbling and slightly funny at the same time.
About the cast
Greta Gerwig carries the film as Frances, supported by Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen, Adam Driver, Charlotte d'Amboise, Patrick Heusinger, Michael Esper and Grace Gummer rounding out her circle of friends, roommates and near-romances. The cast plays scenes with a loose, overlapping energy that suits a story built from small social missteps rather than big confrontations.
Context & significance
Directed by Noah Baumbach, the film is a co-production between Brazil and the United States and belongs to a run of American independent comedies shot in stark black and white, a choice that gives its very contemporary Brooklyn setting an unexpectedly timeless, almost classic-cinema texture. At 86 minutes it moves briskly, never lingering on any one setback long enough to turn it into melodrama, and the genre mix of comedy, drama and romance sits closer to observational comedy than to a conventional love story.
Watching Frances Ha on Ktime
Frances Ha streams on K-Time with a free account login, no additional purchase required beyond an active plan. Both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles are available, so the dialogue-heavy, fast-talking script comes through clearly for Farsi-speaking viewers as well as those watching in the original English.