Frances Ha and Financial Instability: Gest, Mood, and Cliché in the New American Indie

New American Independent filmmakers, such as Kelly Reichardt and Ramin Bahrani, have increasingly addressed themes of financial instability in films such as Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Man Push Cart (2005). While these themes are expressed through the narrative of the film, with characters pursuing certain financial goals or dreams, this paper argues that through a‘neo-neo-realist’ style this financial instability finds formal expression in Brechtian gest and Heideggarian moods. In line with the themes of the conference, this paper asks: What is the formal expression of financial instability? In Cinema 2, Deleuze addresses Brechtian gest in relation to ‘the cinema of the body,’ explaining, “It is Brecht who created the notion of gest, making it the essence of theatre, irreducible to the plot or the ‘subject’: for him, the gest should be social... the link or knot of attitudes” (192). Lean on plot, Frances Ha operates as an example of ‘the cinema of the body,’relying on Greta Gerwig’s performance to deliver the uncertainty of her financial position and relation to social narratives concerning maturity and financial success. This reliance on ‘attitudes’ performed through the body evokes a certain ‘anxiety’ surrounding financial insecurity. Through Gerwig’s performance, audiences are broughtinto a sustained relationship with anxiety, which the film positions against cliché narratives and performances of financial stability. Heidegger argues: “Only when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it arouse and evoke wonder. Only on the ground of wonder—the revelation of nothing—does the ‘why?’ loom before us” (109). The formal, bodily expression of financial instability in Frances Ha invites this uncanny effect, through a performative stutter, creating the means through which spectators encounter the clichéd world surrounding financial stability.