Mistress America
I'm sorry, I know you liked Brooke. He told me that she worships you, she kept talking about how smart you are, how interesting...
.jpg?bwg=1547237247)
Last year I watched Liberal Arts, which may have been the single worst quote-unquote college movie that I've seen. Lazy, boring, and incoherent. In contrast, Mistress America nails not only being a college movie, but being a New York movie and a farce with specificity, flair, and warmth, and manages to do all of these things within the confines of a 97-minute runtime. No mean feat.
I do feel like, for better and for worse, my analysis of the veracity of any of these films boils down to me coming out of the metaphorical theater thinking and then nodding my head and being like, "Yep, that's what it was like." And in Mistress America, that's what it was like. I did not have the same experience that Lola Kirke's character did. But the details were so hyper-specific and accurate, I could see so many people I knew like her from my time at William & Mary. What's more, the Greta Gerwig character serves as an equally hyper and honest depiction of that kind of late-twenties driftless coquette without ever being cruel or mean unnecessarily.
Much of this is, I think, delivered on the hands of Gerwig's performance and screenwriting. Baumbach, I think, is a director who needs Gerwig. Baumbach, I think, is a director who needs Gerwig more than the other way around.
The surrounding cast is all pitch-perfect, too — including the second-act Connecticut set, who once again are drawn with broad comedic brushes without feeling particularly flat or cardboard (another problem with most films in this genre.)