Dear Florence

By AARON MESH

Initial reviews of Noah Baumbach's Greenberg (including mine) mostly ignored the fact that the movie opens not with Ben Stiller's titular master of resentment, but with a 10-minute observation of the dating misadventures of Florence, played by Greta Gerwig—awkward talk with skinny boys at art openings, sneaking out in the morning, stuck in traffic. This sequence is the key to the movie: It sets Greenberg against the many fantasies of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, with a female lead whose own baggage—"Are you going to let me in?" she sings while merging—matters as much as anything carried by the man in the title. R. Academy, Laurelhurst.

  1. Best paired with: Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager.
  2. Also showing: Kick-Ass (Academy, Bagdad, Laurelhurst, Mission).

WWeek 2015

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