Noah Baumbach returns with 'Mistress America', another story of upper-middle class, beautiful, and oh-so-senstive young New Yorkers - the primary protagonist in this story even wants to be a writer! Aside from the cringe factor of writers romanticising themselves, this has strange effects on the plot, which depends on the writer fictionalising their life even as they're living it, which makes it harder to believe in the sincerity of their feelings. Baumbach does satirise this world with a knowing self-consciousness, but only by moving his primary characters into the ambit of some even richer people; the fact that his leads are themselves enormously privileged is never acknowleged. But Greta Gerwig is good, playing a different sort of person (albeit from the same milleau) as the one she previously played in Baumbach's 'Frances Ha' (she also co-wrote both films), and some of the tone (if not the social context) is reminsicent of early Hal Hartley. In spite of my natural inclination to dislike this film, I found myself enjoying it.
Review of Mistress America
