“We’ll take the most expensive bottle of vodka you have and…
everything that comes with it… You’ve got this, money wise, right?”
This movie was so good that it brought about a revival of my
blog. Yeah I said it. This is something that Matt & Kim have previously
been known to refer to as The Rad Shit
Factor. When you see something amazing and it makes you want to create
something amazing and so on and so forth. Anyway, Frances Ha is a
film that has been referred to as a love letter from Noah Baumbach (Director)
to his girlfriend, Greta Gerwig (who plays Frances). It is a part of the
Mumblecore movement, which is a whole other thing. It is also entirely shot in
black and white.
The major point that I want to make is that this movie
is everything that we wanted the show Girls to
be. The film manages to capture not only what real girls are really
like but also what it is really like to be real girls. It's encouraging to see a portrayal of people in their twenties who don't have a real plan or whose plans just aren't working out that are somehow both realistic and not totally depressing.
SAT Practice Time: 20-something women are to now
as wise-beyond-their-years-teenage-girls were to the 90’s.
We have been satirized and iconographied within an inch of
our lives recently. For whatever reason, the spotlight is on us in all of our
post-college-pre-real-life glory. And everyone that was not a part of Frances Ha is doing it wrong.
It’s hard
to explain the film beyond an IMDB-type synopsis saying that Frances is
struggling and she is struggling hard. Although there’s certainly an arc of
self-discovery, the actual plot is a rambling series of events in Frances’s
life. The other characters drift in and out of her life in a way that is
utterly believable, making you miss them when they aren’t around like they're your own
friends. Frances herself is charming, stubbornly flawed and deeply likeable.
Now, let’s talk about [yellowtail]. You’ve seen it. It’s
seen you. The row of bottles with simple labels depicting a cute, orange
kangaroo representing just about every variety of wine known to the casual wine
drinker has likely caught your eye more than once. (Fun Fact: It’s actually a
Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby.) [yellowtail] advertises itself as the Go-To Brand and this is completely reasonable. When you pick up a bottle
of this you can expect a certain level of quality for just under ten dollars. I
chose a Pinot Noir tonight because that’s just what you pick when it’s snowing
out and your best friend is cooking chicken noodle soup for when you get off of
work.
This wine is dry but not too dry just as Frances Ha is sad but not too sad. This
isn’t strictly a comedy, but it’s funny. This isn’t a sweet wine, but it’s
sweet enough. Like the finish of this Pinot, the resolution of the movie is
satisfying, but it leaves you wanting more. In fact, Frances Ha is a Go-To Movie.
Pairing Notes: Watch it over and over
again. Watch it while you sip [yellowtail] with your best friend, watch it
while you cook dinner, watch it while you dance around in your underwear. Try
it with each variety of [yellowtail] in fact!
Wine info from: http://www.yellowtailwine.com/
Movie info from: http://www.imdb.com/
Screenshot at top from Frances Ha via Netflix
