On Frances Ha
I often think of the dancing lady shaking her hair and kicking her legs in a tight black pencil skirt on that magenta poster. I spent a lot of time glancing at that poster on the corner wall of the study lounge of French and Francophone studies in the Chicago Hall of Vassar College, losing thought to her loose hair and wobbly stance, waiting for help with a foreign tongue that was uninhabitable to my thoughts that were still battling their own expression.
I wondered “why was she there”. This aimless ponder anchored my time in the French Lounge, reverberating in my own dis-orientation and total lack of command: why was I here?
I had not known who Greta Gerwig was, with that faint line on the top right corner overshadowed by the vibrant background and the fictional “Ha” . And so I assumed it was a French film for the longest time. It was not until Lady Bird and the remake of Little Women that I finally thought to google her name, and clicked on the wiki page to find this pink monochromatic poster again. I followed Frances Ha , which led me to find Vassar to the left of Paris, as the spots for filming. and it was not until two films and a pandemic later, that I finally watched Frances Ha.
The film is not in color, but it is not black and white. It is not pale or stale or fuzzy or drained. It’s full of colors that don’t yet know how to express themselves. But beneath the muted hues, something is palpitating, almost budding, almost ready, kicking out.
“isn’t this place amazing?”
“is that an eames chair?”
“yea, isn’t this great?”
“total rich kid apartment.”
“the boys just have good eyes.”
“exactly, the only people who can afford to be artists in new york are rich.”
“i am artist, i’m not rich.”
“you are rare.”
…
I looked forward to finishing the remaining film the next day to the part where they filmed in my school. I got the same banh mi sandwich as the day before, and settled in a cubicle of the Regenstein Library of UChicago. Illicitly pulling my mask down, I let the sandwich wait, while I pulled up the criterion account of an ex-crush in class—now turned friend with a benefit—as to avoid further damage it inflicted on my ego.
I hit play and dug in, in search of a melancholic nostalgia that was not even mine. Unapologetically dense and pale, the baguette was a kind of asian under-yeasted white bread perfect for the particular task at hand. Soft and pillowy on the inside slided with a thin blanket of mayo. Reclined on top was an array of marinated pork slices that were sweet and savory, weighed under a wet load of shredded, pickled carrots and daikon—enveloped with the reach of the other half of the baguette into a bundle of flavor dreams, odd and misplaced at the beginning but perfectly sensible now. A Banh Mi made in Hyde Park, Chicago, winter of 2022.
I am fetishizing. In fact, the duration between its moment of conception and consumption, the bundle was already overcome by the liquid from the pickled vegetables. By the time I took the first bite, the dense floury bread had absorbed too much of the brime residue, diluting the mayo and compromising the very infrastructure of the sandwich. This Banh Mi gets a generous six out of ten. for the sentiments, and the lack of reference. I don’t actually remember if there was any flavor.
They say it’s a film that encapsulates the typical Vassar post grad life (or any libral arts to be honest): a peculiar living situation in Brooklyn, scrambling to recover from an infeasible plan--or from the total lack thereof whose collatoral damage still struggles to define its own end. The “plan” was to go after something, a hopelessly painted north, a kind of dream that didn’t know its shape. College equipped them with everything to sustain that kind of seeking until it turns itself into productive delusion or bitter disillusion.
noah baumbach made all of that into a film, he went to vassar, but I am not sure any of us has it figured out.
So I waited for the monochrome screen to shift to Poughkeepsie, when Frances takes up a random summer job as a waiter at her old school, set in my old school, living in a dorm at the age of 27, a thought that I would entertain now and then. Her room is on the fifth floor of the Main Building, i know where it is. Awkwardly spacious for the absence of adulthood, the room is occupied with only a twin bed and compact dorm furnitures: a drawer set that could also act as vanity station, a desk with a built in shelf that gives it the look of a cubicle, with a wooden chair and a closet, and an overaged student.
My friend Prat lived in one of those in our third year, on the fifth floor where the ceiling is unreasaonbly high, hollowing out the rooms underneath. Prat was a philosophy major, still is, at the moment of speaking, working on his master’s. The high ceiling gave him the benefit of a wonderfully tall window with a nice shed to sit on, smoke out of and perhaps philosophize or get lost on.
sophie in frances’ dorm about to throw up.The last time I hang out at that room was probably November of 2019. I didn’t return to campus until after I had finished the last year and a half at home, November of 2021. I was class of 2021.
the alumnae house, or alumni? since I wrote the above ruminations (Feb, 2022), I have come to spend two nights (once in 2022 and once in 2023) here, the same establishment that Frances returned to work at for the summer before she finally contends herself with a viable living situation hospitable to her dreams.
the first night at the alumni house felt like a full circle, like things could not have worked out in any more sense. I was placed in a suite for the night of the lecture that I worked on. I was three months into my first real job out of school, my ticket out of chicago into williamsburg.
in my room, summer 2022. hyde park, chicago.
everything felt particularly fateful at the tail of the summer of 2022, because I had spent the entire summer counting the days staring at my post-brutalist cement ceilings waiting for my life to change-or to simply happen. well that was not exactly how things happened. eventually I got frustrated with my walls, and had to leave. I took the first job offered to me in New York, and got out. of my cell.
I called my major advisor at Vassar not soon after i moved into my new apartment in a rustic house in new york, excited to tell her about my new job, working closely with a living chapter of Chinese contemporary art history. And she proposed to have the artist/my boss to give a lecture at Vassar, and I proposed to do the live translation of it.
“you sure?”
I wasn’t, but by november I was. I had traveled to Sacremento the month before, done the translation thing for the first time in Davis.
the night of the lecture I felt my entire being, intellectually and functionally, culminated. I stood on the stage of Taylor 102, where art 105 happened, the room that inaugurated me to the world of art history. I saw the field of tiny reading lights before me. and I held onto the mic with my right hand close to my chin and whispered to the dark, I was desperate to worth my time.
my suite at the alumni house, nov. 2022, poughkeepsie, ny.and I was so happy with having my own bathroom in that suite where I stayed. I was even happy with the mirror in it.
the second night at the alumni house I left in such a hurry I forgot my housekeys in the drawer and did not realize that until I got back to my place in new york. my keys and my journal. a beige colored leuchittum. beige because I thought it a suitable color for a first real chapter in adulthood. i guess. by this time I had lost my first job as the studio assistant/manager to an unsuccessful lottery draw for H1B visa and an unmerciful employer who dismissed me despite our contract. and this time I had a single bed and communal bathroom. I was there to see another lecture, given by a professor at Chicago. At dinner, I learned that the professor who was sitting next to me at dinner was going to spend the night in a room next to mine, and by the end of next morning, I had no reason to be there any longer than I could fathom.
there was a spider on my ceiling,
and i might have slept with my socks on.
night stand, room b.
frances in paris, i had not remembered that Frances took a detour to Paris, or what happened there. until i saw her mattress against the window the second time I watched the film in new york, did i recall that precisely nothing happened there, because she took melatonin near daybreak, with a lighter that didn’t work, several calls that didn’t go through to Abby, and her back against the Eiffel tower. the glistening streets and the city of lights all behind her.
Paris does not look too different from new york with Frances in it. Anywhere would have been the same, she was trying to escape herself.
Everytime I see Paris in a film, I get reminded of my broken French, and the reason why I was there in Chicago Hall where the Frances Ha poster hang, and why that poster was there.
(tbc)
the second airbnb that i stayed in paris, oct. 2023. all the gold was acrylic. i had not known that sun rose much later in paris than in new york, or shanghai. the first night here i woke up to the dimmed yellow streetlight shining through my window. i thought it was horrifying sight to wake up to, but i was too exhausted to feel frightened that i didn’t bother to get up and softly encouraged myself to go back to sleep. it is ok. but i couldn’t. i reached for my phone to find that it was a little past eight am. a relief spread from the arm that held the time. and i felt back down.