Eventually, we all come to realize that people aren’t always as they seem; it just takes some longer than others to learn this lesson. Take Tracy (Lola Kirke), for example. She’s just come to New York City to attend Barnard College and she doesn’t know a soul. However, her mother gives her the phone number of her fiancés’ daughter in the hopes they can connect. One quick call later and Tracy meets up with Brooke, the picture of success and healthy selfesteem. Five minutes into their conversation, Tracy’s convinced her new acquaintance is the bees knees and if anyone can show her how to conquer the Big Apple, obviously it’s Brooke.
Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America is much like Brooke. It promotes itself as being a feminist/screwball comedy yet its characters are far from being independent enough to give credence to the former designation while the labored efforts of its cast negate the latter. Co-written by Baumbach and his muse Greta Gerwig – who inhabits Brooke like a second skin – the film takes place in the upper crust New York City milieu, in years past seen almost exclusively in Woody Allen films and now appropriated by the filmmaker for such features as Francis Ha and glimpsed at in The Squid and the Whale and While We’re Young.
It doesn’t take too long for Tracy and the audience to realize that while Brooke can talk the talk, she stumbles when she tries to walk the walk of successful woman about town. We find out through acquaintances and the character herself that she’s quite good at coming up with great ideas but lacks the drive to follow through on any of them. Her latest pie-in-the-sky notion is a restaurant with a down-home feel in the middle of New York City, a quiet refuge amidst the impersonal hustle and bustle. Not a half-bad thought, but Brooke’s flimsy financing plan falls through at the last minute so she sets off to visit her rich ex (Michael Chernus) in Connecticut with Tracy, her ex Tony (Matthew Shear) and his current, jealous girlfriend Nicolette (Jasmine Jones) in tow. Their arrival is a shock to Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind), our heroine’s rival and the lady of the house, who goes out of her way to get rid of these interlopers as soon as they arrive.
Throw in a disgruntled neighbor who stops by and a leftover visitor from a party Mamie- Claire was hosting and you have a houseful of eccentrics that Baumbach and Gerwig throw into one awkward situation after another, the director trying to replicate the rhythm and pattern of a Howard Hawks screwball comedy by having his cast make quick entrances and exits and delivering their dialogue in a rat-a-tat machine gun approach. Again, a good idea, but it simply doesn’t work as the performers, while game, lack not only the verbal and physical timing to make this exercise work but fail to generate a sense of fun as well.
In the end, while Baumbach and Gerwig would have us believe Brooke is a proactive woman whose efforts at independence are constantly undone by bad luck, the fact is she’s delusional and adrift, incapable of truly assessing her strengths or her faults so that she might embark on a journey of self-actualization. No wonder she gets so upset when she finds out that Tracy is using her as the main character in a story she’s writing and the portrayal is less than complimentary. The harsh commentary she reads bursts her bubble of self-delusion, as her Judas accurately points out that she thinks she’s something she’s not. The same could be said of America; it thinks it’s a screwball comedy, infused by girl power when really it’s a misguided attempt at making a statement about modern feminism.
