THE MEND

(John Magary, 2015)

The way Magary makes The Mend feel loose while keeping it commendably tight is a small miracle.
That begins with the first "act" (this feels loose and fluid enough that the notion of a three or seven act structure has no relevance whatsoever) wherein the camera observes a party at the New York apartment of Alan and Farrah (Stephen Plunkett and Mickey Sumner), a 30something couple with bohemian friends. We first meet them in the middle of an argument about sex, and the strains in their relationship - perfectly believable, banal little strains which will be uncomfortably recognisable to anyone who has ever had a relationship - are instantly evident, as is the genuine feeling between them. We have already met Alan's older brother, Mat (Josh Lucas in perhaps his best ever role), a sociopathic bullshitter who gets thrown out of his girlfriend's apartment in the first scene and reels across the city, an absolute raging mess of issues until he winds up at the party.
Alan and Farah leave on vacation in a rush the next morning, unaware that Mat is still there, unconscious in their back room. When he awakens, he moves in, then moves in his girlfriend and her son. And then Alan returns suddenly, Farrah having left him, and the brothers' difficult relationship is put under new and intense strain.
All of this is taken in by Magary in a detached, almost remote fashion. His characters supply the energy and emotion, while he follows them around and misses not a nuance or a wince. His film recalls the work of Arnaud Desplechin (in style) but Mat is a character straight out of Mike Leigh - a manchild without any verbal filter or sense of social graces, like a toned-down American version of David Thewlis in Naked.
But all of the characters in The Mend feel as well-observed as Matt; the film's cornerstone seems to be the way personality traits are passed down from parents, and Alan is as messed-up as Mat, albeit in a more polite and acceptable manner. Their father looms over the action, discussed by an old friend at the party, appearing to Alan in a hallucination, mentioned by both as points of comparison. The films women are just as complex; Farrah dealing with her relationship issues in a more adult way than her partner, and Matt's girlfriend Andrea (Lucy Owen) struggling with her feelings for him while also trying to raise her boy. The way Matt responds to a natural and growing intimacy between Andrea and Alan is both hilarious and spot-on. That is the film's best quality; it manages to be both well-observed and savagely funny. The characters may not be all that likeable, but they are sympathetic, and their foibles and outrages are genuinely funny.

FRANCES HA

(Noah Baumbach, 2012)

Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a 27 year old dancer, barely making a living in New York but sustained by her sunny personality and her friendship with roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Only, early in the film, after Baumbach has beautifully established how important this friendship is ("We're like an old lesbian couple who don't sleep together anymore"), Sophie moves out and up, leaving their Brooklyn rental for a Tribeca place with a colleague, and growing more serious about her relationship with the boyfriend Frances dislikes. Frances, bereft and quietly heartbroken, spends the rest of the movie drifting from apartment to apartment, sleeping in spare rooms and on sofas, returning to her parents in California for Christmas, spending a weekend of exquisite loneliness in Paris on a whim, her career never going where she wants it, no boyfriend appearing to replace Sophie, her debt growing and income shrinking.
That is the story, such as it is. Baumbach and his co-writer Gerwig present this beautifully detailed character study in sketches. We see Frances in various different situations, observe how she plays off different people. She rarely seems to fit in, and trying so hard to do so only worsens it so that there are a few scenes here of precision agony, Frances tying herself in knots socially; with a newly independent Sophie, with affluent friends at a dinner party, with her boss. Much of this material recalls the "mumblecore" scene from which Gerwig emerged - we have endless snatches of middle class hipster twentysomething dialogue, some of it very funny, some of it utterly irritating. But Baumbach has developed into a truly accomplished filmmaker and he has the confidence here to reflect the dual influences of Woody Allen (always present in his work) and the Nouvelle Vague (some Delerue features on the soundtrack as a tip of the hat) - hence his film, which seems almost shapeless, has its own subtle arcs and motifs.
While it plays with a beautifully featherlight quality it is surprisingly weighty on the way a person's 20s can just drift by, on the way friendships change and maturity kicks in, on what we want and what we feel we need. Frances, shocked by Sophie's "dumping" of her, takes much of the film to recover, and the way she deals with her pain and how it effects her is nicely indicated by Gerwig, in what is a fabulous performance. While Frances is undeniably annoying at times, she is also funny and sympathetic and entirely human. Her drunken speech on what she expects from love is a great little moment in a film full of great little moments.
There are also a few truly rapturous, bigger moments (Like Frances' race down a Manhattan street to Bowie's "Modern Love"), captured stunningly by cinematographer Sam Levy in glorious black and white. Baumbach has always had a greater sense of cinema than many filmmakers with similar interests in the quiet drama and comedy of people talking, and so he treats us to a few lovely sequences. Frances in Paris, Sacramento and back at Vassar are all similarly lovely set-pieces, and they all combine to make for what might be Baumbach's best film. Funny, brilliantly observed, visually lovely and quietly moving, Frances Ha is fantastic.