Frances is a 27-year-old, barely making it as a dancer in big, scary New York City. She lives with her best friend Sophie whom she adores. The relationship they share is of utmost priority to Frances. 2012 was a time when female friendships were deeply misrepresented in media. There was always a sense of competition and somehow, the power dynamics always got in the way of two women genuinely enjoying each other's company and appreciating each other's accomplishments. Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig manage to bring to light this camaraderie in its true, raw form on the screen. A very admirable yet realistic narrative was built around the complexities of Frances and Sophie. It perfectly captured how love grows and evolves in platonic relationships. We watch these two women move at different paces in their life. One of the reasons Sophie and Frances drift apart is because Sophie finds a partner and is ready for that phase of her life while Frances is still fixating on the childish fantasies of spending the rest of her life with Sophie by her side. "Tell me the story of us" Frances implores Sophie as the two lie in bed and make elaborate narratives of being a famous dancer and a publishing mogul, buying holiday homes in Paris and receiving honorary degrees. But in reality, Sophie realizes that these unrealistic daydreams they knit together will probably never see the light of day while Frances continues to rely on them to give her a sense of purpose.

As Sophie moves in with her boyfriend and Frances starts feeling like she's losing her best friend, she is left with a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. She tries to fill this emptiness with desperate attempts to navigate the world without her support system. She drifts about aimlessly with no place to stay, no real job and no one to go home to. At a gathering with acquaintances, when Sophie is brought up, Frances says " we're basically the same person with different hair" but the look in her eyes reminds us that she's finding it hard to face up to the fact that she needs to let her attachments with Sophie go.

In her perception of love, Frances has a beautifully idealized rendering "It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's - That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess."

As she watches the people around her finding their dream jobs, travelling the world and meeting their partners, she feels defeated and goes back to Sacramento, trying to find a sense of grounding or safe space with her family but it only serves her a harsh reminder of the reality that she is not a child anymore and her parents treat her like the "adult" she ought to be. In an impulse decision to prove to herself that she's doing something, she goes to Paris and sleeps in for the most part. Wandering around the city reading Proust is an experience in itself but Frances can't seem to shake off the feeling of dejection. She is in denial about not making it as a dancer and refuses to accept a desk job at the dance company she is an apprentice at when she is offered, Frances doesn't want to settle for a compromise.

When Frances finds a temporary job at Vassar and runs into Sophie, the two share a reminiscent night. Sophie tells Frances about her experiences in Japan and talks about how she wants to move back to New York with Frances as the two share a dorm bed. In the morning, Sophie is gone and so is Frances' last ray of hope. She realizes that perhaps things will never be the same between her and Sophie, she takes the desk job and starts choreographing.

She invites all her friends to her dance recital and her fantasy of sharing stolen glances from across the room is partially realized. This is the new Frances, she still loves Sophie will all her heart but this love had matured into a more practical version of itself that allows both the women to move at their own pace while still sharing an impenetrable ecosystem. Their very own secret world, unknown to the public eye but persisting nonetheless, allowing them to experience the magic.

"I like things that look like mistakes," Frances says in an oddly comforting tone conveying that often, we don't turn out to become the version of ourselves that we envisioned in our heads. Sometimes, we don't accomplish everything we set out to do but adapting to the ongoing process of denial and acceptance of the person we are becoming might help us realize what we really need.

When Frances comes across a sobbing teenager in the hallway of Vassar, she sits down beside them, expressing a quiet solidarity to her, to the person watching the film, she's trying to tell them that they are not alone in the process of growing up, they are not alone in feeling embarrassed about not being a real person yet.

Frances Ha at its core, is a coming of age tale for people of all ages, reminding us that its okay to be quirky and awkward, that every phase we have will serve as a right of passage helping us evolve into the person we want to become or accepting that we are not this person but most of all she consolates us in the knowledge that "sometimes, its good to do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it.", continuing to prove its relevance, time and again.

-Ananya Kulkarni