This piece originally appeared as a Letterboxd review of Frances Ha (2012) on Dec 3, 2023.
11.08.2024
Why couldn’t I sleep, playing this movie over-and-over in my head? I watched this movie for the first time this weekend, and there I was last night, at 4:49am, watching it again.
The truth is, my original review[1] barely scratches the surface of how much I related to this story. Because two things happened in my life yesterday, the day I first watched the movie Frances Ha (2012):
What do these events have in common, and why did they keep bringing me back to this movie?
An idea that felt out-of-scope of my original review is that Frances Ha teases itself as a Queer story, yet bars itself from going too far:
We are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.This line reverberates throughout the movie because it’s a reminder that the relationship between Sophie and Frances, despite lacking sex, goes much deeper than strictly platonic. The script uses a Lesbian relationship to try to make sense of the profound intimacy between these two friends.
Co-writer Greta Gerwig has continued to explore non-traditional female love stories in her work since Frances Ha. In her directorial debut Ladybird, Gerwig centers a different but equally unexplored relationship, this time, she says, “a love story of a mother and daughter.”
And, like her character in Frances Ha, Gerwig herself struggled to describe the mother-daughter intimacy explored in Ladybird, simply because that kind of female dynamic had been hitherto overlooked. In her words[2]:
I remember every man I talked to who was raised with sisters or who had a daughter said “I know this. That’s my wife and my daughter, or that’s my sister and my mom” and guys who didn’t, they said “do woman fight like this?” I was like, oh, you’ve never seen this because why would you know that this is what this relationship is?So in Frances Ha, Frances uses Queer (specifically, Lesbian) language to attempt to describe the love she experiences with Sophie, one which, perhaps, knows no cinematic equivalent. In a way, the “lesbian couple” sentiment, then, makes explicit the once-subtextual homoeroticism of past movies centering on same-sex bonds.
Here, we see what gay author Dan Savage calls the “cultural cross-pollination between gay life and straight life,” where Frances, delightfully, eschews heteronormative language in favor of Queerness[3]:
Things we thought of as particular to gay communities, gay subcultures, gay life were not choices gay people were making, and a lot of things that we associated with straight people, straight life, were not choices that straight people were freely making, and that, once people were more free to make their own choices, a lot of gay people acted a lot more straight, and a lot of straight people began to act a lot more gay.And yet, this reading of Frances Ha rings hollow to me. It leaves me unsatisfied, lying awake early into the morning. Like Frances in Paris, I slept in too late and lost a chunk of my weekend.
Because Frances isn’t in a lesbian relationship. Despite acknowledging the existence of gay people (“Fuck, I sound like a gay grandmother”), gay people do not appear in this movie. Benji reminds Frances that she and Sophie are “both straight” (did he just assume this?), and unlike an actual lesbian couple that no longer has sex, Frances and Sophie never had sex with each other, and they never will have sex with each other.
I feel teased. I feel robbed. A part of me thinks “if only it were so simple.”
I dated a Lesbian for five years. I am a man (more on that later), and I am not straight (more on that later).
Last week, my ex-girlfriend (let’s call her Amy) and I joked that Shelley Duvall’s description of filming The Shining (1980) captures our experience of dating for five years[4]:
“Almost unbearable,” she said, matter-of-factly, “But from other points of view, really very nice, I suppose.”It’s difficult to put into words. Months after our breakup, I got called on stage at a drag brunch in Hell’s Kitchen, and I told them I’m newly single, because my ex is “a Lesbian, now.” Needless to say, the Queen ate me alive, “Oh, so being Lesbian is a new choice for her, then?” I didn’t have the strength to admit that my ex had always been a Lesbian, incompatible with me as a life partner. And, even still, I struggle with a deeper, unexplored truth, that perhaps we were incompatible for other reasons, not just because she’s gay (Frances’ “undateable” dilemma looms overhead).
In parallel, I have my own sexual and gender awakening that my mom doesn’t understand. Like Gerwig pitching a mother-daughter love story, my mom doesn’t have the vocabulary to even know what to ask me. She never had her Frances Ha, her gay-straight cultural cross-pollination. I don’t strictly date men or women. I move between New York City neighborhoods, so to speak. In some spaces, too straight. In some, too gay. So when my mom thinks I asked for makeup, she seems equal parts belittling, confused, and worried, because we both know I like to play with my gender expression (not that she knows this term). One of the many fraught love stories between mother and daughter.
And yet, Amy and I are, genuinely, BFFs. I don’t think we’ve gone a day in the last year without texting. Whenever I tell anybody this, they say “Then when are you going to meet her girlfriend?” And it’s the kind of question that Frances simply doesn’t have to reckon with.
So my gut reaction towards Frances was envy. You’re not gay, Frances. The world gives you the space to have Sophie. There’s no place for me in Amy’s life. I’m the beard she shaved off. I’m not gay enough for the breakup to be funny. I’m not straight enough for the breakup to be a no-brainer. I’m the undateable one.
In Frances I found my frustration, but so, too, in her I found my answer.
I want this one moment. It’s - it’s what I want in a relationship… which might explain why I am single now. Ha, ha.In Frances Ha the relationship between Frances and Sophie does not stop at “a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.” Sophie gets engaged and moves to Japan. They grow apart. In this limbo, Frances delivers the monologue at the emotional core of the movie. She describes what she’s looking for in a relationship:
When you’re with someone… and you love them and they know it… and they love you and you know it… but it’s a party… and you’re both talking to other people…I meet Amy’s girlfriend (let’s call her Olivia) at a friend’s birthday dinner. She says “You must be Jack, I’ve heard a lot about you!” Funny. Casual. Warm.
I thought I’d be nervous. But here they are, greeting each other with a kiss, sitting right next to me. Why doesn’t the affection bother me? There’s something instantly reassuring seeing them comfortable with each other in my presence.
In conversation, Olivia mentions she’s a talker, so, she jokes, she needs people who want to listen. Amy glances at me from across the table, unbeknownst to anyone else.
and you’re laughing and shining… and you look across the room… and catch each other’s eyes… but - but not because you’re possessive… or it’s precisely sexual…When you date someone for five years, you develop your own language.
but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end.Explaining it here feels impossible. Amy puts on a somber face for me. Using our shared language, she silently tells me: “Olivia does need that, and I’m that person for her.” But Amy’s expression is also self-aware, tender with a hint of irony, a callback to our own exaggerated baby talk. It’s equal parts sincere and funny.
and it’s this secret world… that exists right there… in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about.And in Frances Ha, Frances has this exact moment with Sophie, her lesbian lover (that she doesn’t have sex with anymore):
Who are you making eyes at?
That’s Sophie (Amy?). She’s my best friend.Frances Ha can’t escape my head because I see in it the beginnings of what I felt in my moment with Amy. But only the beginnings. My relationship with Amy is Queer, so it is infinitely more complicated. I’ve gotten to fall in love with the same person twice. Once as young gay lovers navigating what we need in a relationship, and again a second time, finding a new love that is not sexual, yet much more meaningful. Sometimes, sex gets in the way.
How lucky I am that I can be Queer. That I didn’t have to lose Amy, that we have space for our relationship to evolve.
Olivia ended the night offering me a hug, saying “we should hang out again soon!” How lucky am I to have a friend with such a wonderful girlfriend.
Frances Ha gave me a gift. I selfishly thought it co-opted Queer culture to describe a platonic friendship. Instead, the movie has given me the words to describe not just what I have with Amy, but what I want in my own partner someday. How can my mom understand me when she does not have the words she needs? That’s a problem for another day.
Until then, I know what I want. “That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.”