[MISTRESS AMERICA opens in Cleveland on Friday September 4th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
Noah Baumbach has a penchant for writing irritating,
difficult leading characters. He followed up his acclaimed,
semi-autobiographical THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) with darker
pieces like MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (2007) and GREENBERG (2010),
centering on neurotic, narcissistic personalities: Nicole Kidman's
Margot, a short-story writer who wreaks havoc at her sister's
wedding, and Ben Stiller as Greenberg, a damaged, volatile
40-year-old ne'er-do-well.
Brooke, the New York dilettante at the center of his
new film, MISTRESS AMERICA, is also a complicated personality. A
bright, lively blonde with seemingly limitless plans and vocations,
she has a sunny persona that hides a bitter, even cruel nature.
Brooke becomes the object of admiration, and adoration, when Tracy, a
Barnard freshman with literary aspirations, starts hanging out with
her. Tracy's mom is engaged to marry Brooke's dad, and urges Tracy to
get to know her new “sister.” She spends an evening with Brooke,
who greets her at Times Square by descending a crimson staircase at
the subway á la Busby Berkeley, with open arms and a cry of “Welcome
to the Great White Way!” Brooke's dashing lifestyle captivates
Tracy, who's having a hard time fitting into the college social scene
and has just been rejected for membership in a literary society that
hazes recruits by pelting them with pies in their dormitory beds.
Brooke, played by Greta Gerwig, is a manic whirlwind.
She sings with a band at a club, leads Soul Cycle classes, courts
investors for a restaurant she wants to open, tutors junior high
students, “freelances” as an interior decorator, posts
frantically on social media, and talks nonstop, mostly about herself.
Like a prettier, blond version of Greenberg, Brooke is a
self-described autodidact who has many ideas but lacks what the
another character calls “follow-through.”
There are clouds behind the sunshine. Brooke rants
bitterly about a former friend, Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind), who
stole not only Brooke's idea for a T-shirt line but also her wealthy
fiancé and her cats. The screenplay, which Gerwig co-wrote
with Baumbach, also hints at Brooke's sociopathic malevolence. In a
bar one night, a forgotten high school classmate confronts Brooke and
recites the mean things she did to her in school. Brooke shrugs it
off.
Tracy nonetheless finds Brooke fascinating, like a
modern-day Holly Golightly. The aspiring author takes to her laptop
and writes a short story profiling her idol. Writers often figure
heavily in the films of Baumbach, the New York-born son of a novelist
and a film critic. There was the New Yorker short-story author
mom in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, short-story writer Margot, the
documentary filmmaker in last year's uncharacteristically funny WHILE WE'RE YOUNG. Tracy's writing, not unlike that of Truman Capote,
her unacknowledged model, is preternaturally mature and insightful.
“She did everything and nothing,” Tracy writes. “Her beauty was
that rare kind that made you want to look more like yourself, not
like her.” Baumbach's lament for the old ways of doing things is
reflected in Tracy's retrograde ambitions (short story writing) and
antique methods (printing out stories on onionskin paper).Tracy
shares her writing with her best friend and fellow literary outcast,
Tony (Matthew Shear), who's a little envious. (Literary jealousy is another Baumbach theme.)
On the advice of a psychic, Brooke decides to mend
fences with Mamie-Claire, now living in Connecticut with husband
Dylan, Brooke's ex-fiancé. (It's mildly amusing when the man two
women are fighting over turns out to be the chubby, bearded Michael
Chernus.) Brooke recruits Tracy, who enlists Tony and
his insanely jealous girlfriend, Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), on
a road trip to seek Dylan's investment in her planned restaurant.
After they arrive at the Dylan-Mamie Claire home, the movie descends
into clumsy farce: a book club of pregnant ladies discussing
Faulkner, Nicolette's bitter jealousy of Tracy, Dylan flirting with
Brooke, a pregnant woman waiting for a husband who never arrives, a
lugubrious neighbor who strolls into the house uninvited. It's as
though someone changed the channel during BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S
and stumbled on Adam Sandler's GROWN UPS.
The more interesting story elements, such as the rocky relationship
of Tracy's mom and Brooke's dad, take place offscreen.
Baumbach and
Gerwig's writing is often devastating in its raw psychological
honesty. “I can't figure out how to make myself work in the world,”
Brooke admits when her plans fall apart. But the film is dogged by
staginess; characters make long, robotic speeches that feel like
acting-class exercises. Baumbach's style has much in common with
his sometime collaborator, Wes Anderson, but without Anderson's
whimsical touch and, more importantly, heart.
The film works as a
sketch of an unusual, confounding character and a portrait of a
fading New York lifestyle. It is less successful as a coherent, entertaining
story. 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.
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