It’s easy at first to consider Greta Gerwig’s Brooke, the muse of Mistress America, as a maturation of Frances from Frances Ha. She co-wrote both films with director Noah Baumbach, and both are somewhat antic, occasionally histrionic characters. But as you get to know her you recognise that this is not just checking in on what that type of gal would become once she grew up a bit. Brooke has just as many foibles, insecurities and idiosyncrasies, but they are of a type that don’t quite line up with expectations from first impressions. Indeed, misconstruing Brooke (or, at least, being fascinated with her) is what gets Mistress America’s protagonist, young Tracy (Lola Kirke) in trouble in the first place.  You should, however, think of Mistress America as as staking new ground for the Baumbach-Gerwig style. As Brooke defends herself in one of her many verbal parries: “I’m the same I’ve been, just in a different direction.” Baumbach has always had a knack for quips, but the extended central sequence, a dizzying peak of silliness as four, then six, then eight well-drawn characters zing one another in a modern Connecticut mansion is practically screwball. If Ben Hecht or Preston Sturges ever wrote gags about Twitter or literary magazines or Brooklyn bistros, they would sound like this.  Brooke, a Tasmanian devil of activity, needs money immediately for her latest venture, opening a restaurant (which will also be a community centre – and a hair salon). Swallowing her pride she leaves Manhattan to try and guilt an old, rich friend who once wronged her to invest. Joining her is Tracy, an 18-year-old freshman at Barnard College who is about to become her stepsister. Tracy is hopelessly young – she doesn’t know how to buy pasta – but keenly observant. She aspires to be a writer and in Brooke’s combination of apparent cluelessness but continued inspiration, she has found her subject.  Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day, and if that means the occasional pratfall or Gerwig pantomiming what being rewound on videotape looks like, everything is up for grabs. Gerwig is funnier than ever but Kirke does more than play straightman. Tracy is drawn to Brooke because she sees in her a possible future – her secret notetaking is something of a warning to herself. (And, also, to be fair, because nearly everything Brooke says is a zinger worth writing down.)  The film is also bursting with hilarious side characters like Tracy’s lit class chums, a pregnant tax lawyer/book club member and musician Dean Wareham dressed and coiffed to look like the best “Connecticut rich guy” from central casting I’ve ever seen put to film.  No, no-one really talks like that and coming to New York for college isn’t an immediate rush of sophisticated hijinks set to New Order-esque synthesizer and guitar rock. This is a delicious soufflé, and one lighter than Baumbach’s last (still yet-to-come-to-theatres) comedy While We’re Young. It isn’t, however, without gratifying depth, as you’ll instantly love these characters, and want so very much for them to succeed, even if what makes them so likeable is their proclivity for profound and visible failure.
Is Preston Sturges cracked Twitter gags he’d likely have made something like this – a delightful trifle which still has all the depth of Greenberg and Frances Ha