Mistress America

Mistress America, Noah Baumbach’s latest whimsical exploration of protracted adolescence in contemporary New York City, is one of the director’s most minor, yet most satisfying efforts.  Lola Kirke (who made a memorable impression with a small role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl) stars as Tracy Fishco, an insecure Barnard freshman with literary aspirations. Tracy’s first semester in the big city is enlivened when she meets her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke (Baumbach’s current partner, muse, and co-writer Greta Gerwig).

Baumbach’s pictures sometimes veer into pretentious territory but there’s no danger of that in Mistress America because the unassuming neo-screwball comedy is so perfectly scaled to its modest narrative and uncomplicated themes. The movie never attempts to make a grand statement about an entire generation; its goal is simply to entertain for 84 minutes via some highly amusing individuals. Like most Baumbach characters, Tracy, Brooke, and their friends are intelligent in ways that distance them from their emotions. They’re passionate about trying to find a passion in life. The film’s tone is never condescending; Baumbach clearly likes these hyper optimistic, slightly delusional people who all speak with the director’s traditional rapid-fire, cerebral verbiage.

Gerwig shines in her third collaboration with Baumbach. Like so many who came up through the so-called “mumblecore” movement of no-budget filmmaking, she’s proven to be far more than a fashionable flash-in-the-pan. Brooke is almost a send-up of Gerwig’s screen persona yet there is more to her than just the quirky surface. Kirke adroitly keeps up with Gerwig’s energetic performance—her job is to react to Gerwig’s more brash theatrics. Kirke’s responses are often so unexpected they get the biggest laughs. 

Mostly unfamiliar faces populate the rest of the movie, which is a breath of fresh air.   It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an indie comedy that wasn’t incestuously overcrowded with a gaggle of the same well-known actors doing little turns in each other’s projects.  I saw Mistress America on the same day as the latest film by Gerwig’s fellow mumblecore alum Joe Swanber.  His Digging for Fire is a prime example of how too many recognizable talents can distract and distance a viewer, especially in the case of an intimately scaled story. (Baumbach has also been guilty of this unfortunate tendency in the past.)

The principle delight of Mistress America is the joy of discovering new talent and being genuinely surprised by what they do on screen—such as the relative unknowns Matthew Shear and Jasmine Cephas Jones, who play the couple that gets roped into Brooke and Tracy’s third act adventure. Through Gerwig and the rest of the young cast, Baumbach recaptures much of the energy found in his first film, Kicking and Screaming (1995). Like that subdued yet hilarious picture, it is sharp and insightful without ever taking itself too seriously.