Noah Baumbach

Oscar-nominated writer-director Noah Baumbach is known as the creator of literate, personal films about characters in crisis. Actress Greta Gerwig has parlayed her deft touch playing blond oddballs in small indie films into work with an impressive roster of filmmakers including Woody Allen, Ivan Reitman and Whit Stillman. Now the real-life couple, who worked together on "Greenberg," have co-written a melancholy comedy, "Frances Ha" that's becoming one of the most-buzzed-about films on the fall film festival circuit.

Effortless and effervescent, "Frances Ha" is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true. It's both a timeless story of the joys and sorrows of youth and a dead-on portrait of how things are right now for one particular New York woman who, try as she might, can't quite get her life together. That would be the Frances of the title (the Ha isn't explained until the film's charming final frame), a joint creation of and career high point for both star Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach, who met on the director's "Greenberg" and co-wrote the script.

One of the sleeper hits of the fall-festival season has been Noah Baumbach's “Frances Ha,” which in a climate of serious award-season dramas has stood out as a lighter but still thoughtful look at twentysomething life. Shot in black-and-white, the movie offers up the well-meaning but ingenuous title character (Baumbach's real-life paramour Greta Gerwig, who also wrote the script with him). Frances is a Brooklyn dancer who has complicated friendships and generally seeks happiness in a rather unforgiving world.

One of the sleeper hits of the fall-festival season has been Noah Baumbach's “Frances Ha,” which in a climate of serious award-season dramas has stood out as a lighter but still thoughtful look at twentysomething life. Shot in black-and-white, the movie offers up the well-meaning but ingenuous title character (Baumbach's real-life paramour Greta Gerwig, who also wrote the script with him). Frances is a Brooklyn dancer who has complicated friendships and generally seeks happiness in a rather unforgiving world.

For someone who is known for creating characters who are self-centered to the point of toxicity, in person Noah Baumbach comes across as pleasant enough. Polite, a little dry, slightly reserved, he seems like a student-friendly professor who writes, as Baumbach does, occasional humor pieces for the New Yorker. Although his 2005 film "The Squid and the Whale" -- which he describes as a "new beginning" for his career -- was tinged with just enough nostalgia to temper his more caustic impulses, his subsequent films "Margot at the Wedding" (2007)

Noah Baumbach's favorite terrain is deconstructing life's emotional ups and downs with characters so narcissistic and self-delusional they make everyone on screen and off as uncomfortable as possible. With "Greenberg," the writer-director who came to prominence with 2005's "The Squid and the Whale" has reached new highs or new lows, depending on your point of view. Baumbach's latest stars Ben Stiller as 40-year-old Roger Greenberg, whose failed life is envisioned as a self-inflicted wound caused by a bad decision Roger made years ago. There is irony scattered all around him, but any comic relief it affords comes with such an undertow of repressed emotions and displaced anger that it all starts to feel more depressing than dramatic.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach would like to clarify the chief misunderstanding about their collaboration on "Margot at the Wedding." Yes, the husband and wife independent film stalwarts took full advantage of their intimate acquaintance while working together for the first time, a creative symbiosis that has yielded the year's most emotionally wrenching family dramedy. But corner them on the subject and both will tell you that the movie was never intended to become a family affair.

"The Squid and the Whale" has the power to break your heart and heal it again. Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry. Winner of two top Sundance prizes (the dramatic directing and Waldo Salt screenwriting awards) for filmmaker Noah Baumbach, "Squid's" accomplishment is especially remarkable because its material is so familiar.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach insists his coming-of-age drama, "The Squid and the Whale," is not autobiographical. Set in New York in 1986, the film revolves around two brothers, 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline, the son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates), trying to cope with their parents' separation and divorce.

Effortless and effervescent, "Frances Ha" is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true. It's both a timeless story of the joys and sorrows of youth and a dead-on portrait of how things are right now for one particular New York woman who, try as she might, can't quite get her life together. That would be the Frances of the title (the Ha isn't explained until the film's charming final frame), a joint creation of and career high point for both star Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach, who met on the director's "Greenberg" and co-wrote the script.

Oscar-nominated writer-director Noah Baumbach is known as the creator of literate, personal films about characters in crisis. Actress Greta Gerwig has parlayed her deft touch playing blond oddballs in small indie films into work with an impressive roster of filmmakers including Woody Allen, Ivan Reitman and Whit Stillman. Now the real-life couple, who worked together on "Greenberg," have co-written a melancholy comedy, "Frances Ha" that's becoming one of the most-buzzed-about films on the fall film festival circuit.

Since his 2005 critical breakthrough "The Squid and the Whale," writer-director Noah Baumbach has specialized in protagonists who lack an internal censor, who veer between paralyzing self-consciousness and total self-absorption, whose general demeanor falls somewhere between unpleasant and insufferable. This seemingly perverse compulsion has made Baumbach something of an anomaly in the landscape of American cinema, where most movies, even if they don't trade on the charm of their heroes, at least count on their protagonists as easy points of identification.

For someone who is known for creating characters who are self-centered to the point of toxicity, in person Noah Baumbach comes across as pleasant enough. Polite, a little dry, slightly reserved, he seems like a student-friendly professor who writes, as Baumbach does, occasional humor pieces for the New Yorker. Although his 2005 film "The Squid and the Whale" -- which he describes as a "new beginning" for his career -- was tinged with just enough nostalgia to temper his more caustic impulses, his subsequent films "Margot at the Wedding" (2007)

Noah Baumbach's favorite terrain is deconstructing life's emotional ups and downs with characters so narcissistic and self-delusional they make everyone on screen and off as uncomfortable as possible. With "Greenberg," the writer-director who came to prominence with 2005's "The Squid and the Whale" has reached new highs or new lows, depending on your point of view. Baumbach's latest stars Ben Stiller as 40-year-old Roger Greenberg, whose failed life is envisioned as a self-inflicted wound caused by a bad decision Roger made years ago. There is irony scattered all around him, but any comic relief it affords comes with such an undertow of repressed emotions and displaced anger that it all starts to feel more depressing than dramatic.

While some writer-directors have a voice, Noah Baumbach's ability to make people live and breathe is so formidable it's more appropriate to say that he hears voices. In "Margot at the Wedding," Baumbach's unnerving film about impossible people, the voices he hears push at the boundaries of what we are willing to accept on screen. Baumbach, as his Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The Squid and the Whale" underlined, is no stranger to difficult individuals.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach would like to clarify the chief misunderstanding about their collaboration on "Margot at the Wedding." Yes, the husband and wife independent film stalwarts took full advantage of their intimate acquaintance while working together for the first time, a creative symbiosis that has yielded the year's most emotionally wrenching family dramedy. But corner them on the subject and both will tell you that the movie was never intended to become a family affair.

While some writer-directors have a voice, Noah Baumbach's ability to make people live and breathe is so formidable it's more appropriate to say that he hears voices. In "Margot at the Wedding," Baumbach's unnerving film about impossible people, the voices he hears push at the boundaries of what we are willing to accept on screen. Baumbach, as his Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The Squid and the Whale" underlined, is no stranger to difficult individuals.

Since his 2005 critical breakthrough "The Squid and the Whale," writer-director Noah Baumbach has specialized in protagonists who lack an internal censor, who veer between paralyzing self-consciousness and total self-absorption, whose general demeanor falls somewhere between unpleasant and insufferable. This seemingly perverse compulsion has made Baumbach something of an anomaly in the landscape of American cinema, where most movies, even if they don't trade on the charm of their heroes, at least count on their protagonists as easy points of identification.

"The Squid and the Whale" has the power to break your heart and heal it again. Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry. Winner of two top Sundance prizes (the dramatic directing and Waldo Salt screenwriting awards) for filmmaker Noah Baumbach, "Squid's" accomplishment is especially remarkable because its material is so familiar.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach insists his coming-of-age drama, "The Squid and the Whale," is not autobiographical. Set in New York in 1986, the film revolves around two brothers, 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline, the son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates), trying to cope with their parents' separation and divorce.