on being stuck

thoughts on Frances Ha

I loved this film when I watched it the first time feeling this strange familiarity to Frances. I remember how it felt, but naturally forgot some parts, so I rewatched it.

So, Frances is stuck. She's not stuck in a bad relationship or a bad job or in bad family, she's stuck in her mind. She's stuck in a version of a picturesque future that she's envisioned with her best friend Sophie. She's stuck in a version of the future where she's a successful broadway dancer. Frances Ha is a coming of age film, except Frances isn't a teenager, she's a 27 year old adult. Life around her is shifting and she's not ready to confront it. The people she loves are outgrowing her, her dream only seems further away and instead of adapting Frances clings tightly to the person she thought she was supposed to be.

"i'm embarrassed i'm not a real person yet"

The film is filled with this sort of penetrating loneliness, which I only realized as I watched it for second time, a familiar tune as we grow up. With no one person to rely on, Frances is alone. But we don't feel sorry for her, and neither does she. She's unserious, but in a good way. Everything around her is going wrong, she's visibly distraught, but she doesn't let that get her down, she's heroic in that sense. Through a sequence of events as they pile on top of each other, Frances feels hopeless, but she isn't self-destructive, or isn't trying to ruin her life any further she's just desperately clinging to a version of herself that no longer fits and watching it all fall apart in slow motion is heartbreaking. Because, how many times do we feel helpless especially after we've tried too hard for something, someone. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We build our lives with just one version of the story, and sometimes it's not necessarily the right one or the complete one. We know it's distinctly possible to remain too long at a fair (Joan Didion said this).

There's a montage of Sophie and her in the beginning of the film, that's what Frances wants, she wants Sophie and her to be successful young women to take over the world and end up in Paris. She doesn't want the story of "us", us being her and Sophie, to end. It‘s saddening to watch Sophie and Frances grow apart. Not because it's tragic, or because they fought about something, but because life happens, Sophie moves ahead in both her career and relationship. Most of us know this feeling all too well. As we find out later in the film, Sophie isn't necessarily happy with her choices, she loves Patch but she doesn't love her life with him. I think, we follow Frances in this film, but if we followed Sophie, it‘d sort of be the same? Being ecstatic about her new job, and her boyfriend and moving out of her and Frances’ shared apartment, quitting her job to move to Japan, getting pregnant and miscarrying, not being as happy as her blog suggested in Japan, deeply wanting the life she once had with Frances. Surely a different arc, but she's confused, lonely and chaotic in her own ways. So is Benji, and Lev, and Rachel.

A deep seated truth that we realize only as we grow up is that we've only got ourselves. We live entirely, we lean on others, construct stories, but ultimately our grasp of reality is our own responsiblity. Frances is given no one, no perfect job or perfect man or perfect parents, but only herself, she doesn't behave in the usual cliched manner, and is not afraid to be herself. She's not made to be tragic or pathetic to want to be a dancer at the age of 27. And, she's not out of touch with reality for still deeply wanting that to happen for her. Most of us know dreams die screaming. The life she's living towards the end of the film, isn't necessarily what she wanted but she's getting there. An emotion you see on her face when she sees the dancers perform her choreography, a compromise that she couldn't be the one to dance, it was still something she created. She built a life that, while not the one she had in mind, is truly her own and maybe that's the point of growing up. If you notice, whats beautiful is that the entire choreography is so Frances. "I like things that look like mistakes". Frances is difficult and is unapologetic about it. When she puts her name in her little urban mailbox, when she finally gets her place, its a big feeling. I understand the small, declartive act of signing a lease. Just one name to put there, a slight ache that there aren't two names. Still, something starkly beautiful about it, to know this is my place, that I'm a grownup, whether I believed in it or not.