Frances Ha

Noah Baumbach first impressed back in 2005 with The Squid and The Whale, a comedy-drama about a you-won't-like-us-much Manhattan family. It was short but it felt like a fully-formed movie. Subsequent longer efforts - Margot At The Wedding and Greenberg- felt stretched and couldn't find enough for its dull leads (Nicole Kidman and Ben Stiller) to do. Frances Ha, a romansis (that's bromance for girls, by the way) which Baumbach co-wrote with his leading lady (and partner) Greta Gerwig, is thankfully far more bubbly. And fun.

Her majesty, Indie Queen Greta I, plays the titular Frances, an apprentice dancer who hasn't got her life together, despite being twenty-seven-years old, which, a friend tells her, is oooooold. When she and her flatmate/best friend/soul mate Sophie (Sumner) decide to go their separate ways when their lease is up, Frances suddenly finds herself adrift from her anchor, the one person who understood her, who was with her in her post-college bubble. Flitting about from one apartment and job to the next, Frances finds that the world is moving on but she still feels the same...

Baumbach may have written another unlikable character – living with her would be a nightmare - but Gerwig pulls us through. Not even the director's black-and-white photography can dampen the dazzling sunshine that beams from Gerwig's face. And that's when she's not even smiling. Gerwig plays a child trapped in a woman's body: she's jealous when Sophie makes friends with others, she does handstands, she play-fights. Baumbach and Gerwig lay this on a little thick – Okay, we get it, she's immature! – and her crush on Sophie is spelled out again and again – Okay, we get it, they're close. All this takes up too much time when the script should be getting on with the business of turning Frances into a mature woman, which it eventually decides to get around to albeit reluctantly. Like a kid who is told to tidy their room, the movie almost sighs 'Fine! She has to learn something, I guess'. This comes too late in the day though; her transformation comes out of the blue in a last minute sequence where things are tidied up all too quickly.

Loved Greta, didn't love her movie.