You know, I sat in front of my computer with a bunch of notes about the movie Breaking Upwards. I had written about color, especially tonality. I had written about the shift in light that is evident in this movie. A karaoke bar at 2 am, a 20 something party, your parents’ home, 8am on a bike on a Sunday, taking the street before they told you to stay in your place (in the bike lane, you know because a bike isn’t a vehicle, I digress).

I had written down all types of things about love and loss. About parental relationships, employment prospects, career passions, sex, family, place. The ensemble of characters in this film resonate and the decisions and drama feels hyper personal, which is to say, not driven by the conflict between characters but the internal conflicts that are so associated with mid-20s malaise. If anything, this feeling can persist, and we see it manifest itself into later adulthood in a variety of ways and with a variety of tactics that enable people to survive.

I avoided this movie for a long time but am glad I came around to it. I want to watch it again with a closer eye.  I think you should watch it.  

When it comes to matters of love, it’s often platonic devotion that proves the most intimate and carries the most weight in one’s life. It’s the love stories of friendship, the decades-spanning, unbreakable connection to someone that stays around as lovers come and go. Yes, romantic love is an all-encompassing illness of the heart, but without a best friend to guide you, life becomes less tolerable. Cinema has long been awash in tales of romantic love, of course, but it’s rare to see a tale of love between two female best friends, especially one that genuinely shows what it is like to have that kind of soul mate, without whom everything else would be askew. But with Noah Baumbach’s latest film, Frances Ha, we see one woman’s journey of self-discovery, ignited by a fractured friendship.

Greta Gerwig & Mickey Sumner on Exploring Female Friendship in Noah Baumbach’s ‘Frances Ha’