Butler's Cinema Scene

“FRANCES HA” My rating: B-  (Opens May 31 at the Glenwood Arts, Cinemark Plaza)

86 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Frances Ha” finally won me over. But it took a while.

The latest from director Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”) finds him reunited with Greta Gerwig, the vaguely daft co-star of his 2010 “Greenberg.”

Gerwig was about the only thing about that uber-dry Ben Stiller comedy that I enjoyed, and since then she’s appeared in a rash of indie and mainstream films (“No Strings Attached,” “Arthur,” “Damsels in Distress,” “To Rome with Love”)  and become an item with Baumbach.

Gerwig co-wrote and plays the title role in “Frances Ha,” which was shot in crisp black and white in a style that is hugely reminiscent of Woody Allen’s masterful “Manhattan.”  For the first hour or so I was very much on the fence. This is one of those comedies that is more funny strange than funny ha-ha

The twentysomething Frances lives in New York City where she struggles with relationships and employment and making ends meet.

She’s an apprentice with a professional dance company and wants to move up the ladder there, but she’s kind of clumsy and dorky, certainly not prima ballerina material.  She’s much better at leading a dance class for the small fry, where her childlike persona melds effortlessly with those of her students.

Greta Gerwig and Mickey Sumner

As the film begins her current beau suggests they move in together, but Frances declines because of her devotion to her roomie and gal pal Sophie (Mickey Sumner). There’s nothing untoward in the Frances/Sophie relationship (“We’re like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex any more”), but you can’t blame the guy for breaking it off.  He can see where Frances’ priorities lie.

Over the course of this loosely plotted film our ditzy heroine (“I don’t know if I believe anything that I’m saying”) finds herself estranged from Sophie (who moves to Japan with her high-finance boyfriend), shares an apartment with a couple of guys (Adam Driver, Michael Zegen), and moves to yet another room.

Money is always an issue, but Frances uses a newly-acquired credit card to go to Paris because, well, she deserves it.

Clearly, we’re supposed to fall in love with Frances (she’s like a refugee from HBO’s “Girls,” only not so cynical), but that requires us to overlook or find charming her delusions and generally unrealistic outlook.

Gerwig is rather endearing, what with her weirdly graceful gawkiness (a contradiction, but that’s the only way to describe her) and Frances’ tendency to go running and twirling down Manhattan’s mean streets like a colt just learning to use her legs.

But it was only late in the film — when Frances sets aside the flibbertigibbet goofiness to deliver a long monologue about relationships, love and what she wants out of life – that I was able to take her seriously. And in the movie’s final moments we get a hint – just a hint – that in both her professional and personal life, she just might make it after all.

Just like Mary Richards.

In the end, then, Frances becomes a distillation of Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall and Giulietta Masina’s ever-hopeful Cabiria.

Is she charming? Irritating?

Both, actually.

| Robert W. Butler