Greta Gerwig is "Mistress America"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 17 August 2015 15:56

Written by Jack Angstreich

On the evening of Thursday, August 13th, the Film Society of Lincoln Center hosted the local premiere of Noah Baumbach's marvelous new work, Mistress America, co-written by and starring the delightful Greta Gerwig, at the Walter Reade Theater. The film opened in Manhattan the following day.

A comedy about a freshman at Barnard College — played by the lovely Lola Kirke in a moving performance — who befriends the daughter of her mother's fiancé — played by Gerwig, in some of her most impressive work to date — Mistress America has screwball elements and, in its use of voiceover, its stylized dialogue and its visual wit, often recalls the films of Baumbach's sometime collaborator, the brilliant Wes Anderson.

Like the director's previous outing, the exhilarating While We're Young, Mistress America has a lighter touch than his three preceding, more agonized works, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, and Frances Ha. (Amusingly, at the onstage Q & A with Baumbach and Gerwig following this screening, the director was asked if he had any plans to return to the "more brutal" mode of Margot at the Wedding — he promised to do so.) The dialogue in this new film, like that of his last, is consistently hilarious and the comic effect is enhanced by brisk editing.

Having seen all of the narrative features directed by Baumbach, barring the disowned Highball, I'm still not certain whether he is genuinely a stylist, whereas Anderson so manifestly is one — this was undeniable by the time of the latter's excellent Rushmore, if not quite in his remarkable debut, Bottle Rocket — but Baumbach seems to be a more accomplished filmmaker than the exceptionally talented Whit Stillman who, like the director of Mistress America, owes a debt to Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer.

The post-screening Q & A with the director and Gerwig — looking as gorgeous as ever — was moderated by Kent Jones, the New York Film Festival Director, and was not without several pleasurable moments.

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