With the black-and-white “Frances Ha” and now “Mistress America“, Gerwig and Baumbach explore the dynamics of female friendship – how a really great girlfriend can make you feel like you can do anything, and how losing her can be as painful as a breakup. And though she’s dabbled in more mainstream fare (No Strings Attached, Arthur), the 32-year-old actress is certainly at her best when playing a free-spirited woman unconstrained by the narrative expectations of Hollywood.
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Greta Gerwig and co-stars in Mistress America.
In a real breakout performance similar to Gerwig’s in Greenberg, Lola Kirke plays Tracy, a bookish freshman adrift in New York.
Where did the inspiration for these characters come from?
But when we were starting to write this movie there was another piece I’d written that was half finished, and we were toying around with that. Here’s a peek at the appropriately offbeat introduction to the character in the movie.
She pauses. “I keep thinking of a jet ski”. Oblivious to their privileged stations in life, Tracy and Brooke are each trying to realize who they are – not in relation to others, but to themselves. “And this was before smartphones, so I just got lost all the time”. Some of them are my age, and some of them are older. “And cover them by prodding me with a makeup wand that he did not know how to use”. Because what’s always moving to me about that relationship is that Tracy, on the one hand you could say betrays Brooke by writing about her. But Tracy also loves Brooke. “And she did”, Kirke says. I would assume they’re night and day. Rather, they bring different skillsets to the table, and the contrast between their personalities – as well as between fun Gaby and serious Kuryakin, who go undercover as an engaged couple – is where the film’s humor lies, as when Solo casually enjoys a sandwich and a glass of wine while his partner flees Italian guards in a fiery boat chase. There’s probably something wrong with me. (You’ll have to trust me that a line of dialogue about one exceedingly unamusing topic is so impeccably timed and delivered that it left me literally gasping for breath.).
Just a little tchotchke. Our protagonist is Tracy, a jittery frosh-wary of her classmates, bewildered by the campus social scene, and deeply unsure of herself.
These days, Gerwig is part of a growing wave of actresses, like Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham, who also write (and sometimes direct) their own material. I was so close to it back then. It makes me feel better than anything I’ve ever purchased from a store when I’m wearing their clothes.
Baumbach gets under the skin of his characters.
She also has an idea for “a television show, which I’ve read is the new novel” about a self-made superhero named “Mistress America“. She’s just insane about her anyway.
We always said about her that if she had 10 percent less integrity she would have just gotten married to some guy she didn’t love who had money. Because she didn’t do that. We shot [on the floor of the dorm] I lived in at 19. There is still this specter of marriage and children.
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“I think that’s why I employ a therapist”. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but when I’m doing it I can get inside the characters and it doesn’t matter that I haven’t been in school in that long. And she’s a insane striver. They’re all fantastic. I think it’s a good moment but also a necessary moment. Brooke lives in an illegal apartment, has an overseas boyfriend, goes to the city’s hottest nightclubs, works as a spin instructor and talks big about her plans to open a restaurant/hair salon in Brooklyn. Maybe that’s the idea: that Tracy is so sheltered, so empty, that even this dim wattage draws her like a moth to flame.
