While We're Young (2015)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.
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What critics compared While We're Young to
“Young” is funnier and lighter than “Greenberg,” but their existence together and with Baumbach’s 2013 film “Frances Ha” (a collaboration with actress/screenwriter and Sacramento native Greta Gerwig), which centered on a failed dancer, suggests the director holds a fondness for tales of the artistically incomplete.
Baumbach is fascinated by such tense neurotics; remember the cynical indie-band dud of “Greenberg” and the longing also-ran female dancer in “Frances Ha”? His new characters, entering their 40s without children or exciting communication, miss the romantic younger versions of themselves.
By the time she took center stage in Frances Ha, a newfound warmth had found its place in Baumbach's already formidable comedic arsenal.
I suspect the extravagant praise lavished on Noah Baumbach’s films (“Frances Ha,” “Greenberg”) comes from those who can relate to the misery of snarky, neurotic New Yorkers.
In the years between, Baumbach has made some fine pictures (Frances Ha) and some deadening, hermetic ones (Margot at the Wedding), but it's While We're Young that really fulfills the promise of his brash but fine-grained debut.
These are details that, as with his previous film, “Frances Ha,” no doubt benefit from Baumbach’s dating much younger actress Greta Gerwig (who might have made a great Darby), just as her improv-comfortable peers (among whom Driver is fast emerging a star) benefit from such a solidly written screenplay.
…it joins While We’re Young and The Meyerowitz Stories on the short list of films featuring credible artist retrospectives.
In this way, Jay Kelly is in line with Baumbach’s previous films, where the lead is a kind of Baumbach stand-in (Adam Driver in White Noise, Ben Stiller in While We’re Young)…
Baumbach, who has increasingly dabbled in glossy portraits of dysfunction over the past decade with films like While We’re Young (2014) and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)…
[READ MORE: Our review of Noah Baumbach’s 2015 underrated film ‘ While We’re Young ‘ starring Adam Driver]…
Writer-director Noah Baumbach has mined his own life for some sort of inspiration in many past movies including his college days in Kicking and Screaming, his parents’ divorce in The Squid and the Whale and turning 40 in While We’re Young.
His past works such as The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg, and While We’re Young have been studies of human relationships, opting to focus on dialogue and intimacy as opposed to flashy plots with a simple conflict and resolution.
(I realized he hadn’t been out in a while when in his 2014 “While We’re Young” Ben Stiller’s documentarian raised enough money to finish his film by “selling some old CDs.”)
With its intimate camerawork, witty one-liners, drama that draws you in and haunting soundtrack, Baumbach's ( The Squid and the Whale , While We're Young ) tale certainly reminds one of the best of Woody Allen's output (think Hannah and Her Sisters , Annie Hall ).
The result is Baumbach’s most searing work, and that might seem like a low bar considering his filmography includes movies with a more bittersweet, low-key comedic bent, such as “While We’re Young,” “Mistress America,” “Frances Ha” and “Greenberg.”
Considering those were Mistress America , While We’re Young and Frances Ha , he’s been there for some of her more defining moments, and he showed up for her here.