From Black-and-White to Pink: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Journey from Frances Ha to Barbie

The post From Black-and-White to Pink: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Journey from Frances Ha to Barbie appeared first on Consequence.

When the second teaser for Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie dropped last month, I had the following takeaways: “Wow, this looks as amazing as I thought it would be!” “Ryan Gosling can still get it,” “Why is this remix of The Beach Boys’ ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ giving me chills?” and most prominently, “I cannot believe the same people who wrote this also wrote Frances Ha.”

Thinking back on that last thought, I realize that it actually makes total sense that Gerwig and her writing/romantic partner Noah Baumbach crafted this massive tentpole together. Although both films are radically different on the surface — Frances Ha is an indie, black-and-white, French New Wave-inspired flick and Barbie is a mainstream, colorful, star-studded adaptation of a wildly popular IP — the scant plot details from Barbie seem to vaguely mirror Frances Ha’s plot: a woman trying to find her autonomy and identity in a world that obfuscates such desires.

Celebrating its theatrical release’s 10th anniversary this week, Frances Ha marked a major creative turning point for Gerwig and Baumach, who began their collaboration when Gerwig starred in Baumbach’s 2010 film Greenberg and entered a romantic partnership with him a year later. The 2013 dramedy prophesized not only the enduring appeal of Gerwig and Baumbach’s richly observational work, but also the eternal relatability of their preoccupations with finding joy, intimacy, and stability in a cynical, cold, overwhelmingly chaotic reality.

Gerwig herself stars in Frances Ha as the titular, financially flailing New York-based dancer whose best friend and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) decides to move from Brooklyn to Tribeca. As she’s forced to embark on an odyssey for a new place to live — including a brief stint in Chinatown with pre-Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Michael Zegen and Adam Driver in the thick of his Girls fame — Frances only grows more restless and broke, especially when her dancing apprenticeship doesn’t lead her to any prospects and Sophie suddenly shacks up with her boyfriend Patch (Patrick Heusinger).

Frances Ha nails so much of what makes life in your 20s both uniquely challenging and unexpectedly freeing. Frances’s uneventful getaway to Paris articulates the near-constant impulsive decisions we make to compensate for a lack of structure, while her return home to Sacramento and her visit to her alma mater as a summer RA illustrate the need for comfort from our past, when nothing in our present circumstances can ground us.

Frances’s dread and aimlessness also pull her further apart from Sophie too, with their mutual yearning for economic mobility in a post-recession landscape straining their platonic love for one another. It’s an issue that still affects young people today, myself and my peers included — this persistent anxiety of needing to prioritize labor over anything else just to get by.

But part of what makes Frances Ha so compelling — aside from delivering a dazzling vintage rock soundtrack, pretty monochromatic visuals, and an endless series of sharp one-liners — is that its ultimately hopeful message still resonates, the belief that disappointments, obstacles, and the mistakes made in those experiences are all part of the process of pursuing happiness and success. In fact, most of Gerwig and Baumbach’s efforts since Frances Ha seem to be in dialogue with this idea while expanding on it.

Gerwig’s transcendent coming-of-age story Lady Bird and her equally excellent follow-up Little Women center around young women played by Saoirse Ronan, who also navigate relationships, career aspirations, and the inevitable tensions (and occasional silver linings) that manifest from both. Baumbach’s While We’re Young depicts Frances’s out-of-step, existential dread in Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts’s characters. Mistress America features Gerwig playing a grown-up yet somehow even more delusional version of Frances. And The Meyerowitz Stories, Marriage Story, and White Noise all use familial conflict to interrogate the intense impact of big life transitions (a dying parent, a divorce, and displacement from an environmental catastrophe in these particular cases).

In addition to creating a fertile thematic template that Gerwig and Baumbach have continued to mine from, Frances Ha also signified a shift in Baumbach’s typically mordant storytelling. It’d be simplistic to suggest Gerwig serving as Baumbach’s muse was what gave Frances Ha its formal and emotional warmth, but it’d be just as parochial to say her effortless charm both as a performer and writer didn’t have an effect on Baumbach’s writing post-Frances Ha.

Compare, for example, the bitter, sometimes cruel misanthropy of his earlier films like 2005’s The Squid and the Whale or 2007’s Margot at the Wedding versus the mature, sensitive tenderness of 2017’s The Meyerowitz Stories and 2019’s Marriage Story. Depending on what it ends up being like, Barbie may just be the lightest endeavor to date for both of them.

At a time when indie filmmakers remain limited in their creative freedom when making big studio features, Gerwig and Baumbach may potentially be a rare exception to the rule with Barbie. Based on the trailer alone, the sneaky satirical undertones, clear precision in the world-building, and loose energy among its extensive ensemble are undeniable trademarks from their other films. So of course, it makes sense for Gerwig and Baumbach to tell a story about the pains and pleasures of self-discovery in a society that benefits from conformity and homogeny. They have Frances Ha to prove it.

Frances Ha is streaming now on Netflix, AMC+, The Criterion Channel, Tubi, and Kanopy. Barbie arrives in theaters on July 21st.

From Black-and-White to Pink: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Journey from Frances Ha to Barbie
Sam Rosenberg

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