It’s been a damn good year for female characters on screen. From Desiree Arkhaven in Appropriate Behaviour, to Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen in Broad City, well-rounded, fully developed female characters are finally becoming the norm on our screens.
In the past few weeks alone, we’ve been treated to Bel Powley in Diary of a Teenage Girl, Amy Schumer in *Trainwreck *and Amy Poehler in Inside Out. Now we’re being treated to Greta Gerwig in offbeat comedy Mistress America, written by Greta herself and boyfriend Noah Baumbach – it’s the couple’s second film together after 2013’s Frances Ha.
Mistress America stars Greta as Brooke, a chancer who, at a fleeting glance, seems to have it all. She’s got an apartment (it’s actually a hovel in garish Times Square) and rich boyfriend (although, how serious they are might be up for debate) and a deal to start her own restaurant in the pipeline (although the concept, function and funding of this hip new venue has yet to be determined).
In short, she’s the girl who had everything so commited to nothing, *Girls-*generation character we’ve come to recognise so well. Only she’s not 24 anymore. She’s 30 and all her friends have grown up, got real jobs and moved on with their lives.
In fact, the only person Brooke’s still fooling (other than herself) is her wide-eyed, 18-year-old, soon-to-be stepsister Tracey (Lola Kirke, sister of Jemima) who’s just moved to the city and is struggling to make friends.
‘Brooke was a minor character in something else that I’d written,’ explains Greta when we meet her. ‘It wasn’t a full complete screenplay, but when I started talking in Brooke’s voice, it just made Noah laugh and then we started writing more of her and we just felt like she needed a whole movie.’
Brooke’s managed a fair old on a wing and a prayer, while being naive and immensely likeable. Now her friends are settling down though, what’s left for her?
‘Yeah, she doesn’t really have a fall back. She had outsized ambitions, but very little skill. And yet she exists in this world of very stark winnners and losers, where there’s the ‘get your money and get out’ version or the ‘stay in the hustle’ version, but how long can we stay in the hustle?’ Greta says.
As the film goes on, Brooke’s carefully curated life begins to fall apart, much to the dismay of Tracey, who’s keen to perpetuate the myth of her nearly-stepsister as a Gatsby-esque character. Mainly because Tracey herself is having such a rubbish time at university.
She spends her time feeling left out of the exclusive literary society she didn’t manage to get into. Not that Brooke’s suffering from any less FOMO; she herself is bitter about an ex-friend Mamie-Claire who now lives in a big house in the countryside, while Brooke makes a pittance as a Spin instructor.
‘There’s this feeling that everybody’s doing it better than you,’ Greta agrees. ‘I don’t think that ever goes away in life. Everyone is infected with the FOMO.’
In creating these characters through, Greta and Noah give young women struggling with their own problems someone to relate to. Has writing characters like Brooke, Tracey and Frances Ha and her friends given Greta any insight on how to be a young woman today?
‘Ha, I don’t have the answer!’ she says. ‘Having the answer means you don’t have a story. What I do see with young women though is that we’re so hard on ourselves. I mean it’s crazy. If only men could live inside the brain of a woman and see the negativity, self judgement, pushing yourself and criticising yourself for criticising yourself and the endless spiral that happens. I think it’s almost a miracle that any of us are able to get up and do anything!’
So what should we do? ‘If I could create some magic serum it would be – and this sounds completely cheesy but I completely mean it – it would be that women could only identify with their greatness and not the things they percieve as flaws. I mean so much of that is dictated to us by fucking stupid magazines, anyways.
‘But yeah, it’s horrible. I can’t believe it when I see my beautiful, brilliant, perfect friends in a shame spiral about everything. It’s like it’s a daily battle and I feel like we have enough other battles to fight. We need to let ourselves off the hook.’
Mistress America is in cinemas 14 August.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.