'Hannah' & her misters

The characters in Joe Swanberg's "Hannah Takes the Stairs" aren't inarticulate, exactly, although they rarely manage to express an emotion, formulate a thought or even complete a sentence. They are self-conscious in a way that only a generation obsessed with its own representation can be, saddled as they are with an anxiety of influence that seems to compound by the second.

Shot on digital video and group-improvised from a loose outline by Swanberg, "Hannah Takes the Stairs" is the latest addition to the growing canon of DIY, twentysomething angst indies grouped under the category of mumblecore. Like Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation," and the Duplass brothers' "The Puffy Chair," "Hannah" places itself squarely within this tradition by casting both Bujalski and Mark Duplass in the film, which also features Kent Osborne, whose film "Dropping Out" premiered at Sundance in 2000, and Ry Russo-Young, whose "Orphans" won a special jury award at the SXSW festival earlier this year.

The gang's all here, as are their usual concerns, explored with all the self-conscious, self-censoring agony of youth in the post-slacker age. At the center of what little action there is, is Hannah (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring playwright who has landed a writing job on a show so vague and apparently directionless that the guy in charge (Todd Rohal) spends most of his time checking e-mail, updating his blog and ordering lunch. Hannah is dating Mike (Duplass), a laid-back musician who has quit his job and stopped playing music in an effort to determine what makes him happy. Far from taking the form of a quest, this pursuit leaves him free to do nothing but go to the beach and show up unannounced at Hannah's office, which frustrates Hannah -- or, rather, makes her express frustration in a jokey, disengaged way.

She is much more taken -- or at least more impressed -- with her more ambitious co-worker Paul (Bujalski), though his ambitions seem hardly more concrete than Mike's aimlessness. After breaking up with Mike in the most passive and indirect way she can muster ("I don't think you can touch me anymore"), she edges into a relationship with Paul. At the moment, however, Paul is only in love with himself (he's a blogger with a book deal), and Hannah quickly gets tired of his neglect. Turning her attention to the nearest guy in line, she shifts her sights to Paul's friend and their fellow co-worker, Matt (Osborne), who manages to find the time to fool around with magnetic marbles and join Hannah for a trumpet duet in the bathtub.