Anmeldelse: «Mistress America» – Dagbladet.no

FILM: When Noah Baumbach reinvented itself with “The Squid and the Whale” in 2005, he was quickly compared with Woody Allen, and since then this parallel lain there as one of the leading perspectives on Baumbach movies. There are several obvious similarities between the two, although Allen – thankfully – by no means the only one who has made warm and insightful drama comedy from New York. But if Baumbach is not their generation Woody Allen, strengthens “Mistress America” ​​hypothesis that lead actress Greta Gerwig is his generation Diane Keaton.

Infatuation

“Mistress America” ​​is about 18 year old Tracy (Lola Kirke) who has just moved to New York to go to college, and who feel a mixture of loneliness, exclusion and failing confidence that has been so fully described in American fiction that in practice it is regarded as a separate industry. However, everything changes when she meets her prospective stepsister Brooke (Gerwig). Brooke’s all Tracy wish she was self: worldly, confident and able to handle all the challenges life puts her feet. After an unforgettable first evening together, pulled Tracy quickly into Brookes hectic world of parties, part-time jobs and more or less developed business ideas, and soon she has added the unsuccessful flirtation with study buddy Tony behind him.

But as she gets closer to the Brooke, it becomes clear that she has not mastered life just as well as she suggests. And when stepsisters together Tony and his girlfriend Nicolette hitting the road to confront the woman who stole Brookes boyfriend, business and cats, the stage is set for a crescendo of collapsing life lies.

Break

As Baumbach and Gerwig first collaboration “Frances Ha” trades “Mistress America” ​​about life as any-and-twenty-year-old woman, but this time this is portrayed via expectations of an 18-year old and the experience of a 30 year old. Tracy is still looking for its own identity, while Brooke working overtime to insist on their own, and the intersection of these self-images says Baumbach and Gerwig – who wrote the script together – a handful of sensible things about the drives and the circumstances which forms a human life.

“Mistress America” ​​is far from equally stylish as “Frances Ha”. At first glance it appears as a traditional comedy, with a number of scenes in which entanglement is played out as a precisely directed farce, yet is humor all the way chained to other more complex moods. This is due not least music usage, which is like a thick cloud of seductive melancholy over the pictures, but also the characters’ actions throughout anchored in a credible emotional life.

Atonement

The ability to go from heartfelt drama to screwballkomikk and big gestures is also what makes Gerwig to a superb comedy actor – not to say the main reason that “Mistress America ‘s sometimes conflicting form grip merge into a coherent film. It is at all something classic at the dynamics between Gerwig and Baumbach, and one can not help but cross our fingers that this is just the beginning of a long and eventful joint filmography.