681 Frances Ha

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zedz
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#101 Post by zedz » Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:52 pm

Well, I definitely agree with you about the "rapping over an inferior cover version of another song" examples - and that's actually a good analogy for my response to the Frances Ha scene - though I guess there can be examples of that which actually work. At this point I'd probably rather listen to 'Call It What You Want,' for all its clunkiness, than a zillionth repeat of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'

I take your point about 'My Sweet Lord', but I don't think that kind of (litigable) familial resemblance is at all analogous to what we're talking about in these two film sequences.

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Gregory
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#102 Post by Gregory » Tue Oct 15, 2013 4:40 pm

zedz wrote:At this point I'd probably rather listen to 'Call It What You Want,' for all its clunkiness, than a zillionth repeat of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'
"Call It What You Want," while not a great track, is so clearly original, and the sample so incidental, that it would not have mattered whether they had sampled "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "More Than a Feeling." And I think there is an important distinction expressed in the (absurdly long) title of a great, extremely underappreciated album by a band with close ties to the artists behind "Call It What You Want," coincidentally or not:
"The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether From Lack of Ideas or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won"
The idea is to avoid regurgitating something or "freezing" it in time out of purported respect for it when doing an homage and instead to refashion it and make it one's own.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#103 Post by Zot! » Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:29 pm

Not to stir the pot, and it's been a while since I saw Mauvais Sang, but if I'm not mistaken it cribs pretty liberally from Alphaville, and likely elsewhere.

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zedz
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#104 Post by zedz » Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:12 pm

Mauvais sang is totally a love letter to Godard (just as Boy Meets Girl was a love letter to the Impressionists), but I can't think of any instances of sequences in that film being direct lifts. The 'Modern Love' sequence is conceivably a nod to the Madison sequence in Bande a part, but in terms of execution, they're radically different. Carax is a director who borrows liberally from film history, and all of his films are full of quotes, but he uses that intertextuality as a springboard for his own creativity much better than most magpies.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#105 Post by rwiggum » Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:21 pm

Zot! wrote:Not to stir the pot, and it's been a while since I saw Mauvais Sang, but if I'm not mistaken it cribs pretty liberally from Alphaville, and likely elsewhere.
Image

But in all seriousness, I wanted to say how much I've genuinely enjoyed this discussion. It's really given me a chance to clarify my thoughts on the film and get a handle on what it was that really made me love this film.

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knives
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#106 Post by knives » Tue Oct 15, 2013 8:41 pm

zedz wrote:Mauvais sang is totally a love letter to Godard (just as Boy Meets Girl was a love letter to the Impressionists), but I can't think of any instances of sequences in that film being direct lifts. The 'Modern Love' sequence is conceivably a nod to the Madison sequence in Bande a part, but in terms of execution, they're radically different. Carax is a director who borrows liberally from film history, and all of his films are full of quotes, but he uses that intertextuality as a springboard for his own creativity much better than most magpies.
Well not just film history so much as already noted by you art history. I haven't seen any film under discussion, but I think, in a Benjamin sense, the difference between, say, the end of Goodfellas and the Will Smith example which puts Scorsese ahead is that the point of the quotation is the quotation itself where the audience, whether succeeding or not, is intended to see the sequence as a quotation. The point of the quote is for the audience to bring their baggage of the quoted sequence to the film. Tarantino, who I'm surprised hasn't made more a show in this conversation, is probably the best example of this since De Palma, at least in America, builds mixtapes that are intended to be identified as mixtapes where all subtextual meaning is gathered from recognizing and warping what is being sampled. Oddly in the last year or so I think The Long Ranger has most effectively done this as its quotations are made to reassess the portrayal on Native Americans across the whole of cinema even in cases like Little Big Man or Dead Man where there is a sympathetic slant.

As for how this connects to Frances Ha, which again I haven't seen but will probably end up loving, the question of whether this quotation 'has reason or not' isn't to me so much of independence as if it is a Pink Floyd situation or a meta-textual detail. By the sounds of it Baumbach saw this really cool scene once and wanted to put it into a film, but without any meta-textual detail. Just as his own. Thus this leaves the scene as a xerox, an image that as it gets replicated depreciates from the original. This reminds me an awful lot of Certified Copy which doesn't make for the meta-textual argument, though itself is one, and instead seems to ask that the art piece merely copy without depreciation which again puts it into the realm of the subjective.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#107 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Tue Nov 12, 2013 3:27 pm

Now streaming on Netflix in case you missed it or need your day to get better.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#108 Post by Lemmy Caution » Tue Nov 12, 2013 4:36 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:if a lift can be disguised well enough that it fits into the broader structure without feeling awkwardly pasted in, than it doesn't seem like much of an issue- in the same way that the similarities between He's My Guy and My Sweet Lord don't really have any impact on my appreciation for the latter.
Not that it's important at all, but for the record Harrison was found to have subconsciously stolen the melody for "My Sweet Lord" from the Chiffons 1963 tune "He's So Fine."
And by the way, the Edwin Starr version of My Sweet Lord is sublime.

The style, pacing, editing and use of music in Frances Ha reminded me a lot of mid to late 70's Woody Allen. Gerwig looks a fair bit like Mariel Hemingway from Manhattan, but really it put me in mind more of Annie Hall. The title character for Baumbach has a life full of loose ends and no firm direction, despite an artistic pursuit, a la Annie Hall. The relationship which breaks down is with her college girlfriend, instead of a boyfriend, and they drift apart and become estranged.

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ptatler
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#109 Post by ptatler » Wed Nov 13, 2013 11:57 pm

I wrote it up at my blog. I had better points to make twelve hours ago before I got sidetracked by day job and paying bills and whatnot.

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ShellOilJunior
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#110 Post by ShellOilJunior » Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:13 am

Blu-ray.com
I believe that there will be two types of reactions to Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha. On one hand, it will likely appeal to viewers who are unfamiliar with the different films that have inspired it and can easily relate to many of the challenges and situations its main protagonist faces. These viewers will discover something new and fresh. On the other hand, there will be a lot of viewers that will remain indifferent to the main protagonist's immaturity and the sweetness that is attached to it. Amongst these viewers some will also conclude that a lot of what Frances Ha tries to accomplish has already been done a lot better.
I guess I don't fall into either camp. I think being familiar with the films that inspired Frances Ha can only make the film more enjoyable. Gerwig said she had friends read the screenplay and they came away from it being depressed. The thing that's impressive is how the screenplay translates to the screen. It's exuberant, feels retro but fresh at the same time and there's just something incredible and romantic about NYC in black-and-white. Oh and Gerwig is delightful.

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Re: Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

#111 Post by Zot! » Mon Nov 18, 2013 11:04 am

Black Hat wrote:Finally got around to seeing this tonight and feel like I'm missing something for I saw nothing cute about the film, the character of Frances or Greta Gerwig. All these comparisons to Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer are laughable. None of the dangerous underlying sexiness of Godard, nor the tortured comedic everyday love of Truffaut or the contemplative musings of Rohmer. Nothing about the film struck me as organic, it was all this tired surface level bullshit of privileged white people and their problems. It was like watching a 90 minutes Friends episode starring Phoebe's niece but without Chandler & Joey to make you laugh. As I was watching it what kept resonating with me in the theater was the discussion some of us were having about Lena Dunham, it seems to me that some of the same critiques of Girls that I've heard can very well apply to this film.

I did really enjoy Mickey Sumner's performance, thought she was fantastic and really hit what it is to be a young career woman of her class background in New York trying to balance everything. In contrast to Sumner my issue with Gerwig was that given that New York, or the concept of post college young people trying to make it in the city, was a character in the film, her behavior felt forced and artificial to the point of caricature. In other words it didn't matter whether Frances was in New York or Topeka, Gerwig was going to play her the same exact way.

Of course when you invest 70, 75 minutes you want to see how it resolves itself...
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instead we get a lame musical montage of Frances going from Utica hall monitor to Manhattan choreographer. How the hell did that happen? Somebody's gotta explain that one to me because it struck me as lazy filmmaking/writing at its finest.
This is a pretty accurate summation of my feeling regarding this. The "Modern Love" sequence was actually a throwaway gag and completely inoffensive to me, ultimately, the rest was middling pap.

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#112 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:23 pm

I am actually surprised by my own positive reaction toward this film, having disliked all Noah Baumbach movies thus far (Greenberg at a distant indifferent second). I would be surprised if anyone thought that it wasn’t his most accomplished film, which I attribute solely to his collaboration with Greta Gerwig. Unlike many people on this thread, I did not find her performance inauthentic or overweeningly twee; on the contrary, her fits-and-starts personality suited the episodic trajectory of her struggling middle-class white eccentric perfectly. I think the great challenge of privileged white folks as they find their good fortunes slip or “correct” (depending on how you feel about white privilege) is to establish some kind of compassionate community based on a rapidly self-effacing cultural heritage—an ideal that has thus far been rejected by the late-capitalist liberal subject extolled in America. The myth of independence and individualism is so strong among them that they have abandoned anything beyond the nuclear family, and even that is more often than not left behind after college. White people are ciphers in this new world, and it will be fascinating to see what formerly middle-class young white people will do in the future in order to find a place for themselves in an expanded, developing world that will always feel wounded by the legacy of western aggression inevitably coded as white. What is left of their identities once they are disenfranchised? I’m reading tea leaves to a certain extent; white people are still very much in power in this country, even as the middle class disappears. But the signs are pretty clear for this fall from grace, whether or not it might be deserved.

Frances seems to me an emblem of this change; her parents can’t afford to support her anymore; she accrues irresponsible debt on a credit card; she is surrounded by careerists and trust-funders who are, by virtue of their empty characterizations, markers of the past; and she is a mediocre artist without much to contribute culturally to the world. Her reluctance to engage men romantically, in particular her resistance to nesting with a man, precludes the traditional heterosexual endgame of children and family, the reproduction of the middle-class nuclear family. I realize that I’m putting a heavy metaphorical burden on this mostly self-involved, frivolous character, but given Baumbach’s exclusively white, middle-to-upper-middle-class focus, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to put this rather simple story in a much larger socioeconomic context.

I also realize that this mostly flies in the face of authorial intention. I don’t think either Gerwig or Baumbach would claim these things about their movie. They would prefer to have it compared favorably with Truffaut or Woody Allen as part of a cinematic, aesthetic genealogy and perhaps leave it at that. But I think it’s only possible to view this film as something artistically universal if you spend most of your time as a white person among white people (full disclosure: I’m a middle-aged white dude).

With regard to the diminishment of family and community among whites, the most poignant part of the film was Frances’s return home. Sacramento is in fact Gerwig’s home and those were in fact her parents, which I thought were canny location and casting decisions. The verité effect put the natural warmth of her family visit in stark contrast to the trite glibness of her interactions among friends and acquaintances in New York, as amusing as those interactions occasionally were. At the same time, that warmth is a remnant and a lot of the rituals lack a deep cultural history (e.g., the altogether Unitarian church ceremony with the guitar-playing minister). Frances has to drink from a very shallow pond. The montage quality of this sequence emphasizes that ephemeral, thin quality.
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And the final shot of her truncating her surname seems all of a piece with this theme.
In fact, there were a few brisk montage sequences throughout the film, which I thought were executed nicely by Baumbach. Overall, the pace of the film was excellent; there were never lulls, and I liked the intertitles introducing locations as postal addresses. I don’t think there is much of anything to remind one of the French New Wave; I only noticed one shot of Frances, Lev, and Benji turning as a unit away from the apartment front door in a kind of melancholy denouement of their evening that reminded me, for some reason aside from the number three, of Jules and Jim. Otherwise, I don’t understand the comparison. But all of the actors were strong, and with regard to characterization, while I think it’s fair to dislike a film because of its characters' flaws, I don’t think it makes sense to discredit the merit of a film for that reason. If Frances spites herself, it seems very fitting in this type of drama with this type of person.

Finally, the Mauvais sang theft is an inexplicably lazy, irrelevant citation, but so fleeting, that it didn’t really affect my appreciation for the film. I think Gerwig and Baumbach can spare the rod against themselves in penance. At the same time, I only think zedz appears to be excessively indignant to some of you because of the care he has taken to articulate his position, not because he wants the director to flagellate himself.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#113 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:39 am

Having commented twice in this thread without having seen the film, I thought I throw out a quick opinion after watching it last night. FRANCES HA is an okay, if derivative, comedy that gets better as it moves along (that pre-title sequence is unpleasantly grating) and is like a more imaginative version of LOLA VERSUS, Gerwig's previous film that this one closely resembles. HA absolutely is mining the same territory as GIRLS but is not nearly as witty as the HBO series even though it is a lot sweeter (not necessarily a good thing). The relationship between Gerwig's and Sumner's characters had some nice moments and I thought the film was well-paced, even if the "Modern Love" segment seemed completely arbitrary. Nothing here that hasn't been done better before, but entertaining enough.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#114 Post by mistakaninja » Thu Jan 09, 2014 8:29 pm

I've never seen the Carax picture, but the line between homage and wholesale lifting seemed blurred to me when it came to the similarities between the Frances/Sophie relationship and that between Susan and Anne in Claudia Weill's Girlfriends. They were walking in their footsteps, but Weill didn't have to insist on her characters explicitly articulating how much like married couples they are.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#115 Post by LavaLamp » Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:33 am

Just finished watching the BD of Frances Ha for the first time. Stunning...I feel this film is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Gerwig is fantastic, and her lack of artifice/guile really made the character enjoyable to watch. She was also excellent in Greenberg, but truly shines in this film....

Enjoyed the b&w cinematography, and definitely saw the French New Wave homages, specifically of Truffaut's films (not only Jules & Jim, but the running through the streets reminded me a lot of The 400 Blows). The movie was essentially about a character on the road to finding herself. The deterioration of Frances & Sophie's extremely close friendship was both painful & poignant to watch, though it was an inevitable result of their growing independent of each other (or rather Sophie becoming independent of Frances)...

Something no one has mentioned yet is that Frances strongly reminded me of the character Delphine in Erich Rohmer's excellent Summer/The Green Ray (1986). Not only are the two characters in similar situations, but the dinner table scene as Frances keeps making awkward comments & was met by blank stares reminded me a lot of the similar lunch scene in Summer when Delphine was awkwardly justifying why she was a vegetarian to a table of meat-eaters.... :lol:

One of the funniest lines in the film was when Frances is walking along & her ex-roommate Benji sees her & says something like, "I recognized you from your weird man-walk...." :lol:
Last edited by LavaLamp on Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:57 am, edited 3 times in total.

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tenia
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#116 Post by tenia » Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:48 pm

I finally sit through the movie yesterday evening and found it enjoyable, but not much more.
It works by moments only, jumping a bit from scene to scene, with very good actors having to play characters not always very smart and plausible, which is unfortunately often emphasize by situations which are too often bad for them (like this trip to Paris when Frances has already been 100 times described as broke, but she can go within a week notice for a useless Paris week end ? Really ?).

But there are some really nice moments, funny, light-hearted, and often very well played which makes the movie works. It's too bad it's not always working though.

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domino harvey
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#117 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:00 pm

tenia wrote: (like this trip to Paris when Frances has already been 100 times described as broke, but she can go within a week notice for a useless Paris week end ? Really ?).
Not that I'm particularly eager to defend this film that everyone else loves, but that's the point-- she uses a credit card to fund an impromptu and ill-conceived trip to Paris when she could have done any number of practical things with the temporary funds (or, better yet, not used the card at all).

I've been sitting on this minority opinion for a couple months, but: Coming from one of the board's longest and most fair and foul-weather fans of Baumbach, it pains me to say this movie is the worst thing he's even done and I should have known better when so many people who don't like Baumbach started weighing in that he's finally made a film they like. This movie is essentially everything people always (wrongly) accuse Baumbach films of being, filled with obnoxious characters who aren't funny and aren't interesting dwelling in their selfish privilege for the amusement of others. I really had to wonder how many people praising this film are just so far removed from the world it depicts that they can't see how little Baumbach has actually brought to the material. I've been to too many apartments like the ones occupied at varying stages by Frances to get much novelty out of spending time with their occupants, and unlike Kicking and Screaming, Baumbach doesn't take a specific relatable premise and use it to go somewhere new, interesting, amusing, or exciting. He's content to rest with the presentational, and the film is a total failure in the process. Why would I ever want Baumbach, one of the modern masters of interpersonal artifice and self-interest, to make a Mumblecore-aping film with a fear of cleverness?

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mfunk9786
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#118 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:50 pm

If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that Domino would love The Wolf of Wall Street and hate Frances Ha...

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knives
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#119 Post by knives » Tue Jan 21, 2014 2:34 am

Not to add fire to the flames, but watching this almost felt like Godard watching Day for Night (though I'm no Godard). It kind of feels like watching Baumbach sell out and not even in an inspired or talented way. In the extras Baumbach talks proudly about shooting in black and white and digital, but I think on both accounts he fails so terribly with the movie looking ugly in a way I thought that digital had overcome by this point. How could someone as talented as Baumbach make this? All his other films have characters who are so much more caustic than this, yet he has always manged to add dimensions to them and make their failings funny in a non-exploitative way which just doesn't apply here.

Also Zedz will go bald if he watches the interview because he talks about the music in such a silly way (and doesn't mention Carax treating the quote as his own idea).

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zedz
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#120 Post by zedz » Tue Jan 21, 2014 2:54 pm

knives wrote:Also Zedz will go bald if he watches the interview because he talks about the music in such a silly way (and doesn't mention Carax treating the quote as his own idea).
Fortunately, I've got a head start!

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#121 Post by swo17 » Tue Jan 21, 2014 3:17 pm

Image

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zedz
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#122 Post by zedz » Tue Jan 21, 2014 3:20 pm

That's actually an identikit picture of the entire forum.

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domino harvey
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#123 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jan 21, 2014 3:31 pm

Luckily I'm handsome enough to bring our average up closer to a Stanley Tucci

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zedz
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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#124 Post by zedz » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:49 pm

I watched that Baumbach interview, knives.

Jesus Fuck, I rest my case.

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Re: 681 Frances Ha

#125 Post by LavaLamp » Fri Jan 31, 2014 11:07 pm

I'm actually surprised that I liked Frances Ha as much as I did, since I certainly can't relate to the character...I'm a guy in my early 40's, have never lived in NYC, and have never had an extremely close friendship with anyone like the one Frances & Mickey initially share in the film. However, I guess I can empathize with Frances' plight, much like I felt towards the characters in The Squid and the Whale.

Re: the going to Paris on a whim sequence, I agree it was quite foolish & irresponsible of Frances to do this - a last-minute plane ticket probably cost $1,500 - $2,000, and she definitely would end up deeply in debt as a result. I also know she was paying through the nose on her international phone call(s)....However, in defense of the character, I felt that she was just very needy & wanted to see her friends in Paris, even though the idea was impractical. It was ironic that she couldn't get in touch with them while there (though completely expected - after all, she was only there for two days).

This is why I was impressed by the ending scenes when the character finally moved to an apartment on her own & seemed like she was going somewhere career-wise.

Though, I did find it somewhat unrealistic that Frances could afford the rent for a relatively nice NYC apartment by herself (her parents weren't helping her financially, and it didn't look like she had any roommates) on an administrative/secretarial salary. Those forum members who either live in NYC and/or are more familiar than I am with the rent situation there, please feel free to correct me here if I'm mistaken....

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