Joe Swanberg
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Connections, in both directions
Do you remember those awkward moments in When Harry Met Sally… when Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan felt a deeper connection but couldn’t bring themselves to act on it yet?
About 25 years ago, When Harry Met Sally… popularized a notion that plagued many platonic relationships: How can men and women just be friends when sexual attraction keeps getting in the way?
You're Next (2013)
Directed by Adam Wingard
influenced by Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), Alexander the Last (2009)
Who else would get the sly joke of casting low-budget splatter director Ti West (The House of the Devil with Greta Gerwig) as Aimee's boyfriend, Tariq, and mumblecore captain Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs, also with Greta Gerwig) as an uncultured meathead who argues that TV commercials are the pinnacle of art?
The ubiquitous Amy Seimetz, who starred in Swanberg's Alexander the Last , plays Drake's sister, Aimee, whose throat is slit when she's clotheslined by a strategically placed trip wire.
Barbie (2023)
Directed by Greta Gerwig
influenced by Nights and Weekends (2008), Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
Barbie (2023), una propuesta escrita y dirigida por Greta Gerwig y su tercera película en solitario luego del olvidable exponente mumblecore Noches y Fines de Semana ( Nights and Weekends , 2008), craneado junto a Joe Swanberg, es un trabajo desparejo que por un lado tira por la borda aquel naturalismo concienzudo de Lady Bird (2017) y Mujercitas ( Little Women , 2019), en ambas realizaciones cercano al relato de iniciación o bildungsroman o coming of age aunque en el primer caso estrechamente vinculado al cine independiente de Estados Unidos y en el segundo a la larguísima colección de adaptaciones de la novela decimonónica de Louisa May Alcott, y por el otro lado adopta la estrategia reglamentaria de todo blockbuster posmoderno, burdo y autoexplicativo que se precie de tal, léase eso de unificar múltiples recursos narrativos/ discursivos/ ideológicos/ formales en un pastiche que lamentablemente no logra redondear ninguna de las vertientes de turno, lo que de todos modos no le resta méritos al film…
Her first film as an actor and co-writer, Joe Swanberg’s largely improvised “mumblecore” feature Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), opens with Gerwig sitting with only a bath towel on her lap while a boyfriend and she laugh and pick lint from their skin.
Writer-director Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”/”Nights and Weekends”) gives it a different spin and tries to shake things up a bit, even mixing up the chronology of the novel, making this seem not like the Little Women I recall from my youth (I’m on board with the 1933 faithful version, where Katharine Hepburn was the rebellious heroine in need of maturity).
That this is only her second solo directorial effort (she co-directed and co-wrote 2008’s “Nights and Weekends” with Joe Swanberg) is shocking.
Lady Bird (2017)
Directed by Greta Gerwig
influenced by Nights and Weekends (2008), LOL (2006), Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
That’s Lady Bird , Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut — she previously co-directed Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg — loosely inspired by her teenage years in Sacramento in the early 2000s.
But maybe it’s also that Gerwig–who previously co-directed, with Joe Swanberg, the 2008 Nights and Weekends –is kind of like the cartoon Sleeping Beauty , good at breezily orchestrating the special gifts of each bird in the forest.
Gerwig, making her solo directing debut (she previously collaborated on the 2008 mumblecore movie Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg), injects Lady Bird with the kind of vivacious energy that suffused the films she co-wrote with the director Noah Baumbach ( Frances Ha and Mistress America ).
Though Gerwig technically co-directed the scrappy 2008 romantic drama “Nights and Weekends,” that project registers as little more than a footnote to the mature production values on display here.
Making her solo directorial debut (she shares a credit with Joe Swanberg on 2008's Nights And Weekends ), Gerwig sets Lady Bird in her hometown of Sacramento, and in 2002, when she was around the same age as her protagonist/proxy, 17-year-old Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan).
Screenwriter Greta Gerwig, in a spectacular solo directing debut (she co-directed Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg in 2008), has carved a brilliantly hilarious and heartfelt script out of her own teen life.
In that sense, it's similar to Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" and even "Requiem for a Dream" where the story is told in such an abstract and unconventional way.
This is not a new genre of film, having to some degree dominated "serious" American indie films in the last ten years or thereabouts (the prototypical film of the form, Funny Ha Ha , debuted in 2002 but wasn't widely seen until 2005), and Gerwig herself was first thrust to prominence as the title character in Hannah Takes the Stairs , directed by the artistically barren Joe Swanberg.
In mumblecore movies like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Baghead, and in mainstream comedies such as No Strings Attached and Arthur, Gerwig plays quirky and adorable, awkward and charming.
She softens Baumbach’s edges, yet carries over the insight that she debuted in 2007’s Hannah Takes the Stairs (which she wrote for Joe Swanberg).
For those already familiar with Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Damsels in Distress, Arthur), enjoyment of Frances Ha is pre-determined.
If you never caught her early work for mumblecore wunderkind Joe Swanberg ("Hannah Takes the Stairs," "Nights and Weekends"), her scene-stealing role in Whit Stillman's "Damsels in Distress" or her first collaboration with Baumbach in "Greenberg," then "Frances Ha" will be a revelation.
Robert Greene (Actress, MIFF 2015) edits, and Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas) produces.