A 'Ha'

Here's my favorite movie of the year so far:

FRANCES HA (A) - This is what movies are supposed to be. Funny, clever, real, insightful, a mix of dread and playfulness, full of sharp performances. Just like life itself. And here, it's all resting on the shoulders of the eminently capable Greta Gerwig, who emerges as the physical comedienne of her age.

"Frances Ha" -- a play on Gerwig's character's name, which only fully reveals itself in a memorable final shot -- is joyous, disconcerting, and just a little heartbreaking. Relationships come and go and curl back again, and connections are often missed. Characters end up in cities and situations in which they don't belong. Frances represents her fellow 27-year-olds making their way through the world. Here, that world, like in "Girls," is in New York and has its privileges (mostly, parents with money). Ask any New Yorker, and you'll find that it's not easy to meet people and make connections in a teeming metropolis of 9 million people.

The relationship that holds this movie together -- and it's a marvel -- is the friendship between Frances and Sophie (Mickey Sumner), college pals who are still rooming together when the movie opens. It's a complicated relationship, with obvious lesbian undertones that play out in anything but an obvious way. Credit Noah Baumbach, who directed and wrote the screenplay with Gerwig, for not taking this story anywhere near the place that more two-dimensional films venture into. Sophie is crushing on Frances, and when Sophie moves on (with other female friends and with her fallback fiance, Patch), we're not sure what Frances is thinking or feeling.

Meantime, Frances -- who is struggling to hang on with a dance troupe and to make enough money to pay the rent -- seems to be going through a painfully gradual nervous breakdown. She is socially awkward, and a lousy roommate. She makes sarcastic comments, mostly for her own comprehension and amusement, and then quickly points out that she's not serious. It's like a nervous tick of someone existing in her own protective bubble. Her observations reminded me of a "Saturday Night Live" character played by Kristen Wiig, a fast-talker who follows every sentence with "Just kidding." But whereas Wiig and a few other gifted physical and verbal female comics (such as Melissa McCarthy, Patricia Heaton or a young Amanda Bynes) play things broadly and to a TV audience weaned on Carol Burnett, Gerwig adds an extra layer that commands the big screen. This is a performance more worthy of Isabelle Huppert than of Jennifer Aniston.

There is definitely a masculinity to Gerwig and her character. Besides the obvious situation of being the target of another woman's affections, she is also accused at one point of walking like a man. (I wouldn't go that far, but she does have an amusing loose-limbed galumph.) I'm sure Baumbach's perspective looms large here. We saw a similar social pariah in his last film, "Greenberg," in which Gerwig played a key supporting character. Here, there's still hope for Frances, and we cheer for her to succeed and to avoid ossifying into the hardened misanthrope that Ben Stiller's character withered into. Will Frances make it? Thanks to Gerwig and Baumbach, we care deeply about that question, and "Frances Ha" zips along toward an ending that matters.

Baumbach's career has built toward this moment, finally producing a flawed masterpiece -- after a career full of efforts that merely passed as brilliant films. "Frances Ha" has more depth than those other films that earned A grades, such as "Kicking and Screaming" and "The Squid and the Whale." He pays black-and-white homage to his forebears, principally Francois Truffaut's "Small Change," classic Jim Jarmusch, and Woody Allen's late 1970s output. Gerwig certainly helped him capture the cadence of 20-something-speak, and she and Baumbach have created an awkward verbal environment, part smart writing and part improvisation worthy of Cassavettes.

The screenplay is full of seemingly mundane but deceptively insightful millennial-speak. Describing a random guy she doesn't care for, Frances says, "He's the kind of guy who buys a black leather couch and is, like, 'I love it.' " Or, stuck working a demeaning job that involves following a rich patron around at an event and pouring wine for her, Frances finally deadpans, "She's my ward." Of course, these lines work better in context. You can hear the connection to Lena Dunham (who had her own older man to collaborate with, Judd Apatow), but I can't imagine any "Girls" episode that I would want to last 90 minutes. (Speaking of "Girls," we're treated here to Adam Driver's alternate take on that show's Adam character, and we wish there were more scenes with his Lev, a winning riff on Richard Edson's hipster from "Stranger Than Paradise.")

The film isn't perfect. A few lines clunk (I'm thinking of Grace Gummer's throwaway line at the dinner party), but no one bats 1.000 in the big leagues. Scenes don't always flow gracefully into the next, but the herky-jerk editing adds to the jangle that is Frances and her neuroses and her friends.

I went into this movie with unfairly high expectations, and I was prepared to watch a smug vanity project unspool and unravel. Instead, I savored this lovely character study throughout, and I walked out of the matinee and into the sunshine with a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. Ha!