Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Frances Ha
2013 · Noah Baumbach · Frances Ha on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch Frances run and leap down a Manhattan street. (camera)
The camera tracks alongside her in one unbroken burst of motion set to David Bowie, the film's most famous image of pure physical joy.
Payoff: Nothing about her life has changed by the end of the block, and it's the happiest moment in the film. In the reading: movement of world. The reading calls this the movement of world: the street and the song do the moving, and she has simply let herself be carried.
Notice the intertitle announcing each new address Frances lives at. (structure)
A white card and a street name mark every relocation, turning the plot into a chapter-book of temporary rooms rather than a clear arc.
Payoff: Her addresses are the only thing in the story that keeps reliably changing.
Notice how the black and white photography levels everyone's clothes. (light)
The monochrome flattens the money, taste, and class differences the story is otherwise so alert to, so everyone photographs equally solvent.
Payoff: The look and the script are quietly arguing with each other the whole time.
Watch how Frances walks compared to everyone around her. (performance)
Gerwig builds the character out of a slightly wrong gait and an enthusiasm that overshoots and visibly collapses, never sliding into pure caricature.
Payoff: She's the only one at the table visibly performing taste instead of just having it. In the reading: the-gest. The reading calls this a gest: watch her body do the class analysis at a party the polite dialogue is too careful to make.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what carries her rather than what she achieves: music, borrowed rooms, other people's plans, a street.