Frances Ha

The new film by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg) features co-writer Greta Gerwig in the title role. Frances is 27, five or six years out of college, doggedly pursuing a not very promising career as a dancer, still very much at loose ends. The story takes her through a year’s worth of changing addresses, mostly in New York City, but also in Paris, upstate New York, and (briefly) Sacramento. Full of awkward charm and reckless energy, the ostensibly “undatable” Frances has hot-and-cold attachments to a revolving cast of roommates, including soon-to-be-married best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and low-key male pals played by Adam Driver and Michael Zegen. Baumbach films it all in black and white, works in music from the films of François Truffaut, and creates a beguilingly contemplative context for this 86-minute celebration of quirky charms and offbeat energy. Pageant Theatre. Rated R.