Director: Noah Baumbach
A central prop that appears in the Connecticut mansion which becomes the setting of Mistress America’s take on the drawing room comedy is a chess board. It’s as utilized as any image in the cinema, but one that seems just right in Noah Baumbach’s latest. For one, the relationship between Tracy Fishko (Lola Kirke) and Brooke Cardinas (Greta Gerwig) plays as lengthy feeling-out process before tensions start to come to a boil. The women are both polar opposites and soul-sisters, eventually coming to despise each other for the exact same qualities that they themselves are guilty of. Furthermore, said drawing room comedy is a terrific feat of blocking unlike anything Baumbach has committed to screen thus far. Each movement and line is meticulously calibrated–the pregnant woman waiting on a ride (Cindy Cheung) and the suspicious neighbor (Dean Wareham) are included both as witnesses and as pieces to crowd and confuse the action all the more. As with Hollywood’s classic screwball comedies, the dialogue is spit fast and often two or more conversations are happening at once, each line is spoken with a barbed layer of resentment, and the carefree, upperclass setting only underscores the frivolity of it all.
Director: Noah Baumbach
In Greenberg, Ben Stiller ranted to a party full of millennials about their misplaced over-confidence and sincerity, exclaiming, “I’m freaked out by you kids!” While We’re Young plays like a continuation of the thought, initially starting with generational harmony before becoming increasingly paranoiac–it’s All About Eve, if not Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the us vs. them mentality it exhibits. The occasional bouts of anger and the smugness in the characterizations of the young (their very hipness first serves as a contrast to the older generation, later as a running joke) are familiar of Albert Brooks’ combative, satirical works. But despite his success in demonstrating an increasing skepticism coming from within the aging Generation X, director Noah Baumbach’s discussion of objectivity and subjectivity in the documentary form has a distracting and tenuous relationship with the rest of the material. The last third takes a wild turn into territory covered by James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News. But Stiller, as in Greenberg, excels at playing the increasingly bitter flag-bearer of his generation, and Adam Driver does a good job of walking the line between sincerity and condescension–one has no trouble imagining why he could get under the skin of someone with Stiller’s insecurities.
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