Highly observant yet often annoyingly mannered, American Mistress takes director Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha to the realm of farce. With casual dialogue as antic and fast-paced as a Marx Brothers movie, Baumbach, who again co-wrote with Greta Gerwig, explores another New York City fallen and frustrated, snarky character. Brooke (Gerwig) has a lot more audaciousness (and arrogance) going for her than Frances did, and unlike Frances, she at first seems like she has her life a whole lot more together.
Until it begins to dawn on the viewer that she’s a rock singer who we haven’t heard sing a lick, and an interior decorator whose only example we get to see is her own apartment. And until you stop and think of the prospects of her projected new business enterprise: a restaurant/convenience store/hair salon hybrid to be called “Mom’s.” Her partner: a Greek guy who’s conveniently out of the country. It’s later said to be her failure to “follow through” that is her Achilles Heel, but an overwrought imagination doesn’t help. Baumbach and Gerwig present Brooke as both having vision and simultaneously suffering the results of her own mean streak and skittishness.
Since things happen at the drop of a dime in this movie, Brooke’s high ambitions are suddenly thwarted. Before long Brooke’s Times Square apartment zoned for commercial use reverts to, shall we say, limited access. (Brooke explains she chose Times Square of all neighborhoods in part because that’s where she got off the bus). Tough times call for tough measures and Brooke looks up her “nemesis,” Mamie (Heather Lind), who stole both her boyfriend, Dylan (Mitchell Chernus) and business idea for t-shirts with flowers.
Brooke’s “sister to be” (her dad is set to marry her mom) is Tracy (Lola Kirke) a college freshman at Barnard who fancies herself a writer and serves as the movie’s point of view. Bored with college life (“it’s like when you are at a party and don’t know anyone–only it’s like that all the time”) Tracy becomes enamored with Brooke and seems very much in admiration of her. That all falls apart at the Connecticut mansion of Mamie and Dylan. Here’s where things accelerate to a fever pitch–and then promptly crash. A secret is revealed about Tracy amidst a whole lot of frenetic characters talking over one another, the short-term effect of which is sporadically invigorating comedy. Then it distressingly goes on extra innings. What starts off (and thankfully ends) as a pretty good relationship movie, goes off course in the middle.
When Brooke makes her pitch of the restaurant idea to millionaire Dylan and Mamie and Brooke’s posse (a couple college kids friends of Tracy) and other assorted hangers-on, the film quickly and irrevocably saunters off to Stupidville. Good farce needs to be believable. Here, when everyone swoons at Brooke’s pitch, it’s as bad as a Hollywood schlock piece. That scene serves as a sad reminder that the director of The Squid and the Whale, Greenburg, and Margot at the Wedding has seen better days even if stylistically he’s in a different time zone now. It’s a shame, too, because amidst the disjointed jumble, there are witticisms galore here.