pless. ndfull. sn't a clue.

Any of the above could be added to the enigmatic title of Noah Baumbach’s latest to describe its titular heroine: a scatty New York singleton be꧃set on all sides by financial, professional and romantic disappointments as she comes to t🐻he point in a young person’s life when twenty-something rootlessness should really be giving way to something more focused and substantial.

So far, so Girls.

Yet Baumbach’s follow-up to 2010’s &ndashꦜ; again starring Greta Gerwig, the poster girl for mumblecore cool – has loftier ambitions than that.

It’s in black and white for one thing, a stylistic choice that links the film not only to but also to the youthful spirit of ⭕the French New Wave.

Intertitles stating each of Frances’ new addresses, meanwhile, serve as de facto chapter headings, lending a novelistic feel to a film that might have seemed s🎀lightly shapeless without them.

Not that story is in any way crucial. Would-be dancer Frances is a creature of impulse who, having been deserted by long-time roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Sting), flutters from one flat-share to another in the hope that one will suit.

Lodging with a couple of artists one moment, returning to her parents the next, she’s never far from an awkward situation or a social faux pas. (Check out her fruitless attempts to find a cashpoint so she pay for a penniless beau’s din🤡ner.)

Though Frances seems to invite more misfortune than , Gerwig’s relatable, unshowy performance always gives us something to root for, 𒉰even when we’re slapping our foreheads.

Like her character, Gerwig seems to be at a transitional stage herself; there will surely come💛 a time when she’ll be too big for the kind of lo-fi indies that made her name.

Yet if Frances proves to be a swansong of sorts, she could hardly go out on a Ha -ppier note.