In director Noah Baumbach’s failed comedy Mistress America, an insecure young college student meets her step-sister-to-be (Greta Gerwig), who turns out to be a human whirlwind, dancing on the razor’s edge between frantic excitement and chaos. The premise of an unsure young person becoming captivated by a high energy and charismatic personality is an interesting one. Unfortunately, the movie fizzles because of the shipwreck of a screenplay (co-written by Baumbach and Gerwig) and another aggravating performance by Gerwig.
In the first half of the film NOT ONE WORD seems genuine, like a real character would have uttered it. Mistress America’s worst misfire is the extended screwball sequence at a house in Connecticut – the cast is just flinging the lines as if in a high school play (until a really good actor, Michael Chernus, shows up as a real character).
No actor could save this screenplay, but Greta Gerwig has the gift of making any movie worse and she does here, too. Gerwig plays the same character in every move because she thinks it’s Cute Kooky like Annie Hall. But she’s neither cute nor kooky – just annoying to the point of loathsomeness. Here, her character is a goofy-clumsy social loser, but just so Smart and Wonderful that she uses words like “autodidact” and “my nemesis”. Gerwig tries to be knowing and ironic, but she’s just cringeworthy, the most embarrassing moment coming when her character explains her own jokey “pretend rewind” gesture.
After the screening, another audience member said that Gerwig’s character is obviously not functional because of a bipolar disorder. Well, I’ll bet that Gerwig didn’t think that her character was ill – just charmingly idiosyncratic.
The other lead is played by Lola Kirke, who is pretty engaging; I’d like to see her acting with a real script. There’s also excellent acting by the veteran Chernus (Higher Ground, Men in Black 3, Captain Phillips, The Messenger, Love & Other Drugs). Jasmine Cephas Jones is stuck in a one-dimensional role as a hyper-jealous girlfriend, but she pulls it off with distinction. Rebecca Henderson is excellent as the bitter woman from Gerwig’s past.
I’m not the audience for Mistress America since I avoid Baumbach and especially Gerwig; I only saw Mistress America because I went to a mystery screening. Now I haven’t liked any Baumbach movie since his initial indie hit The Squid and the Whale in 2005. I have nothing against a naval-gazing filmmaker filling his movie with neurotic New Yorkers. Woody Allen has made over thirty of those and seven or eight are masterpieces. But – as sharp as Woody’s lines are crafted – you believe that this characters have thought them up on their own, not so with Baumbach.
One scene in Mistress America is inspired and true to the characters – a bitter woman confronts the clueless Gerwig character with a grudge from high school. But that wonderful moment isn’t worth the nails-on-the-chalkboard experience of the film as a whole. Skip Mistress America (and any upcoming Baumbach/Gerwig project, too, for that matter).
