YOU JUST HAVEN'T EARNED IT YET, BABY: a review of "Mistress America"

"MISTRESS AMERICA"
Screenplay Written by Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig
Directed by Noah Baumbach
* (one star)
RATED R

Someone...anyone just really needs to tell Greta Gerwig to stop...and immediately!

Dear readers, let me just say up front that I have nothing against Greta Gerwig on a personal level. I do not know her and truth be told, she just may be a wonderful human being who is a wonderful romantic partner, daughter, best friend to all, champion of animals and the environment, assists little old ladies across the street and whatever else a terrific person could be and possibly encompass. All of that being said, and based solely on her talents as an actress and regardless of the heaps of critical accolades that have been hurled her way, I absolutely, positively cannot become a member of her fan club.

I just do not understand the appeal that Gerwig possesses and has somehow bewitched critics and audiences with. Over her three films with Writer/Director Noah Baumbach, which includes the so-so and somnambulant "Greenberg" (2010) and the horrendously plastic "Frances Ha" (2013), Gerwig has demonstrated over and again that she is just not nearly as beguiling and entrancing as critics, audiences, Baumbach and Gerwig herself thinks she is. She just strikes me as a figure who desperately wishes to be the next great comedienne but is somehow just too smug to allow herself to fully let her inhibitions go and just be a comedienne as she is too busy checking herself out in the mirror all the while.

My perceptions of Gerwig's screen persona were fully confirmed in "Mistress America," Baumbach's second feature of 2015, following up his absolutely terrific return to form "While We're Young" from earlier this year. With "Mistress America," we are given the flip side of Noah Baumbach's cinematic coin. Where "While We're Young" was witty, perceptive, multi-layered and even refreshingly bitter, "Mistress America" almost re-defines shallowness as it manufactures a world where not one character, situation or motivation passes for anything approximating the way people truly live, breathe interact and feel.

Yes, I can see that Baumbach and Gerwig were attempting to craft a screwball comedy, where the dialogue and behaviors exist within a heightened state. But is there any reason, that for all of the prefabrication, nothing felt to be remotely true considering the story it is trying to tell? And at the center of this plastic confection sits Greta Gerwig, mugging endlessly and flouncing around like the most untalented kid in the school play but who has unctuously convinced herself that she is a Shakespearian trained actress..and will never let you forget it. "Mistress America" is another insufferable tripe of a film that shows how Gerwig brings out the worst of Bambach's creative tendencies. In fact, the best thing that I can say about Noah Baumbach's "Mistress America' is that it is only a mere 84 minutes.

"Mistress America" begins promisingly enough as we are introduced to 18 year old Tracy Fishko (played by Lola Kirke), a college Freshman at Barnard University in New York City who is struggling with finding her way in her new environment. Utterly friendless, floundering in her classes and failing to gain the attention of the campus'elite literary journal, Tracy falls into loneliness and disappointment as college and life in New York City have not proven themselves to be the wondrous time she had possibly envisioned for herself.

While on a phone call with her Mother (played by Kathryn Erbe), it is suggested that Tracy should reach out to her soon-to-be step sister, the 30 year old Brooke (played by Greta Gerwig), who lives in the city. Tracy soon obliges and upon meeting Brooke, she is swept away by Brooke's adventurousness and undeniable free spirit which contains all manner of nightclubbing, romantic big city apartment living, Brooke's continuously shared stories of her romantic entanglements, personal resentments and her long desired dreams of owning a trendy (but not too trendy) N.Y.C. restaurant.

Tracy and Brooke, become fast friends as Brooke's madcap personality, combined with her wacky plans to attain funding for her dream restaurant as well as plot revenge against Mamie-Claire (played by Heather Lind), her former roommate and self-described "nemesis" entrances Tracy and even inspires Tracy's writing, which covertly emerges as the satirical (and highly unflattering) short story entitled "Mistress America."

All of the threads come to head as Tracy and Brooke, with Tracy's one friend/writing rival Tony (Matthew Shear) and his jealous girlfriend Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) in tow, embark upon a road trip to Mamie-Claire's wealthy upstate New York abode, for money and retribution, not necessarily in that order. Hilarity ensues...

Noah Baumbach's "Mistress America" very much like "Frances Ha" is a film that contains many good ideas and a worthy storyline but is just much too in love with its own sense of self-congratulatory quirkiness and pseudo intelligence to bother to condescend to just telling a decent story. It is precisely the very type of indie film that people who hate indie films would point to as why they hate indie films, and frankly, I could not blame them at all. This is a film that doesn't seem to exist in a world that feels remotely recognizable as the entire escapade feels contained within a set of quotation marks thus giving the film as a whole an ironic distance that works against the good will it is obviously trying to achieve...but without relinquishing any sense of hipster status in the process.

From the ironic stiffness of every performance, in which the entire cast behaves as if they know only too well they they are existing within a screwball comedy, therefore draining any stitch of comedy from the proceedings, to the faux '80s electronic pop score by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, Baumbach undercuts any sense of truth and poignancy from "Mistress America" and ultimately all of the fun as well. It is the type of film where everyone, but mostly Greta Geriwg's character, speaks in non-sequiturs that feel so labored over and are littered profusely throughout the screenplay, whether they make any narrative sense of not. Want some examples?

"New York isn't the New York I used to know. There's too much construction." 
or
"I thought I might actually go to college. I'm not an amputee."
or
"I'll probably end up doing something depressing, but young."
or even
"There's no adultery when you're eighteen. You should be touching each other all the time."

Now on the surface, these may seem to be like some good one-liners but within the content of "Mistress America" as a whole, they all felt as if Baumbach and Gerwig came up with these statements first and then tried to write a full story and screenplay around the lines instead of having the characters arrive at these so-called witticisms organically. It all felt to be so very false and made for a film that was indeed cringe worthy to just listen to as well as one where you would feel sorry for the actors who had to speak this nonsense.

But again, this all goes back to Greta Gerwig, who did indeed co-write this screenplay, and it feels as if she is so preciously in love with her words and Baumbach is so preciously in love with Gerwig that there was never a critical eye towards the project, externally and internally within the characters themselves. Yes, there are points where it seems that Tracy and therefore Baumbach is attempting to be somewhat critical of Brooke's outlandishness, most notably in a good scene where Brooke is confronted by a former high school classmate she once tormented and teased. But, as with everything else in "Mistress America," anything more probing is just waved away because Brooke, and therefore Geriwg is just so damn adorable and funny, that no matter what she does, all is forgiven. In fact, it is that very element within the conception and treatment of Brooke that plunges "Mistress America" to its downfall.

Let's be real, for all of Brooke's supposed free-spirited effervescence, it just stunned me that at no point during "Mistress America" did any character at any time ever wonder if Brooke was perhaps...oh, I don't know...mentally unstable. This isn't just a "pollyanna-ish" 30 year old who is wayward. Brooke is a young woman suffering from mania, delusions of grandeur, wild mood swings and is a habitual liar who exists within a powerful ADHD fueled narcissism. It would not surprise me if the character happened to be bi-polar but just like the character Tea Leoni portrayed in Writer/Director James L. Brooks' all over the place "Spanglish" (2004), Brooke is clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness that the characters and the movie itself flat out refuses to acknowledge, therefore undercutting any sense of credibility because the film is so in love with her.

Over time throughout the film, Tracy's sense of criticism of Brooke becomes not only adoration but sheer emulation in her own behaviors and soon, every character, even the ones who serve as antagonists, are just satellites to her insufferably self-congratulatory sense of whimsy, which Gerwig performs with a complete erratic quality that is so showy and hammy and without any sense of authenticity or depth that she was tremendously off-putting. Instead of drawing me in closer to her with a greater sense of understanding, Honestly, why is Brooke the way she is? Baumbach and Gerwig never once bother to try and delve under her surface, seemingly feeling that her prefabricated antics are enough to win audiences over. Not for me. Greta Gerwig's performance and "Mistress America" as a whole, just continued to not only keep me at arms length, it kept pushing me further and further away.

Look, Greta Gerwig, I have to concede, is just not for me and perhaps, and especially after three times at bat with Baumbach, any new film that features Gerwig (and really, any new film that she has co-written to boot), I should just give a wide berth. If you like her and find her cinematic gifts, such as they are, charming, more power to you and have a great time.

I just can't join in anymore.