Venice at Home - Day 1: Noah Baumbach
Wednesday, August 31, 2022 at 10:44PM 
Last year, The Film Experience welcomed a new series – Cannes at Home. While works by the world's greatest auteurs premiered at the Croisette, the project was an aid to combat FOMO for those not fortunate enough to attend the event. Now, it's time to introduce a new endeavor focused on the Venice Film Festival and its official selection. From August 31st to September 10th, this series will consider past works from the many filmmakers currently presenting their films in competition, offering a parallel program you can enjoy at home. At the same time, Elisa Giudici will be in Venice, updating us on the festivities.
First up, there's the opening film – White Noise. While we wait for Noah Baumbach's latest to arrive, let's recall the director's history…
Watching every feature Noah Baumbach ever directed makes it easy to divide the man's career into phases. From 1995 to 1997, there were the beginnings of the auteur as we know him, still working under the shadow of established filmmakers such as Whit Stillman and Woody Allen. Kicking & Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, and Highball represent a tryptic of youthful cynicism with an urbanite twist and a dash of intellectualist contempt. They feel reminiscent of others' work because of their cast, language, and rhythms while gesturing toward a new specificity that would become evident in the director's subsequent efforts.
And then, Baumbach didn't make any feature until 2005's The Squid and the Whale, only pausing his directorial inactivity to make a quick and cheap short in 2000, Conrad & Butler Take a Vacation. Maybe because of the time between projects, the cineaste's return brings a point of rupture and renovation, a new phase in his career where humanistic sensibilities gradually temper the cynicism of yore. The wit is still sharp but not callous. The whispers of self-criticism have grown into caustic cries, reverberating through studies of people whose flaws the camera mercilessly reveals.
These projects encompass another tryptic made up of The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, and Greenberg. On this last one, Baumbach worked with Greta Gerwig for the first time, their connection beckoning another development in the director's style and preoccupations. Significantly, this was also when he separated from Jennifer Jason Leigh and started a romantic relationship with Gerwig that would juxtapose with their creative partnership. Frances Ha and Mistress America starred this actress turned muse in prominent roles while crediting her as a co-writer.
Indeed, even working from an auteurist mindset, it's not hard to see Gerwig as these films' auteur alongside her director. Arguably, While We're Young also fits into these considerations, reflecting a generational collision between artistic and romantic collaborators. Baumbach started by dissecting a specific generation to which he belongs and, in these 2010s movies, that focus shifts to younger people to whom he may relate, but at a significant distance. Such preoccupations continue to make themselves known in The Meyerowitz Stories while pointing in the direction of interrogations of art and artists.
The De Palma documentary is a journey through another filmmaker's work, while Marriage Story suggests memoirist reflections about Baumbach himself, with Adam Driver coming to occupy the symbolic avatar role hitherto played by Ben Stiller, Jesse Eisenberg, and sometimes Noah Baumbach in the few times he was part of his film's cast. Not having seen White Noise, I wonder if it supports these readings on the director's evolution as an artist, his gradual maturation. Sight unseen, it certainly feels like a departure with its period setting, gargantuan budget, and script adapted from Don DeLillo's doom-laden satire.
And yet, White Noise is also a reunion of sorts, a return to well-trodden paths in Baumbach's filmography. Greta Gerwig is back for a fourth film with her partner sitting in the director's chair, while Adam Driver consolidates his place of honor in Baumbach's troupe of regular players. Remember the last time these three ostensibly worked together on a feature?
FRANCES HA (2012)
If there's one Noah Baumbach film I'd recommend and would gladly call my favorite, it has to be this first attempt at co-writing a script with Greta Gerwig. Appealing to Nouvelle Vague aesthetics and a loose structure, Frances Ha is a picaresque journey through the dilemmas and anxieties of a twenty-something living in New York. Her struggle to make a living, to connect, to find a home after her best friend moves from Brooklyn to Tribeca forms the basis for a fleet-footed rumination that feels grounded in authenticity, touched by unripe nostalgia.
Back when going through my 28 years through 28 films, I mentioned the experience of watching Frances Ha in a theater, how the sensations of that lonely afternoon have stayed with me over time. Such memories prevail, fragments in an impressionistic collage that makes up one's past. I mention these flowery notions because, from a particular perspective, Frances Ha is akin to that ineffable collage. What some call meandering and purposeless about the film, I find evocative, an oddball sense of what is simultaneously immediate and long gone.
Moreover, it's a generous film that circumvents the sneering attitude of Baumbach's 1990s portraits of a similar milieu. It neither judges too cruelly nor idealizes the characters running through the streets, dance recitals, perhaps from themselves. Frances Ha is that rare instance where something is so specific of its time and place that it attains a weird version of out-of-place timelessness, ringing true even as it infuriates, endearing even as it risks alienation. A storm of contradictions swirls around Greta Gerwig's Frances, and, by miracle, the performance allied to the text somehow does the unworkable work – she anchors Noah Baumbach's best film yet.
Frances Ha is streaming on AMC+, the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and DirecTV.
What's your favorite Noah Baumbach flick? Are you similarly besotted with his Gerwig collaborations, or do you prefer his earlier works, perchance the drama of Marriage Story?
Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Venice, Venice at Home, White Noise
Reader Comments (6)
Based on my list so far... Frances Ha remains at #1. I love a lot of his work.
Wow, I'm surprised that I've seen quite a number of Baumbach's films already - Greenberg, Frances Ha, While We're Young, Mistress America, Marriage Story - and I think I'm leaning towards either Frances or Marriage as my favorites.
Thank you for plotting his trajectory as an artist. I only got excited for White Noise after the initial reception in Venice. I think he's becoming one of my favorite auteurs without me noticing it.
I think my top Baumbach top 3 are Kicking and Screaming, Mistress America, and The Meyerowitz Stories. The first 2 are among my favorite films, period. Interesting take on Frances Ha. I think it judges Frances more harshly and that the treatment of Grover, Chet, and Miami is much more generous - but hey, we all have different reads/experiences. I do think some of the moments in Frances are rather wonderfully relatable though, whether happily so (her scenes with Benji) or not so much (the Paris sequence).
And while it's not in my top 3, Marriage Story was very strong and I still rather wish Scarlett had won an Oscar for that (although Renee was great in Judy). That Dern did and she didn't just feels kind of weird (but then I'd have given Dern's to Florence Pugh).
My favorite film of Baumbach's is The Squid and The Whale. I think Noah and Greta make each other better filmmakers, but I will always gravitate toward the more personal films.
My favourite Baumbach is probably Frances Ha, but I think Mistress America is one of the most underrated and quotable films of its decade and it's a close second for me.
Juan Carlos Ojano -- I'm curious to know how you'd react to his earlier 90s films.
ScottC -- I would also have given Dern's Oscar to Pugh. However, I think I'm a Ronan voter in Best Actress with Johansson as a close runner-up. I did not care for JUDY.
Lenard W -- Frances Ha, The Squid, and the Whale, and Marriage Story make up my Baumbach top 3. I agree that there's something special about his more personal projects.
chasm301 -- Love how that script appeals to screwball comedy structures and sensibilities. It's grown in my consideration since its original release.