Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” is, like Lena Dunham’s hit HBO series “Girls,” fixated on the insular, entitled world of artsy, twenty-something Manhattanites, where twenty-seven year-old bachelors are still bankrolled, unapologetically, by their parents, and barely employed comedy writers and sculptors refuse to relocate to cheaper, less happening outer-borough apartments.

Like Dunham, Baumbach bravely expects a sophisticated audience—many of whom long ago gave up on their artistic pursuits to secure a steady paycheck—to not only tolerate but fall in love with this lot of irresponsible malcontents. That he succeeds—half the time, anyway—is a commendable achievement, but one leaves “Frances Ha” slightly sour, wishing its creator had been a little less enamored with these characters.

The prominent females in “Frances Ha” are less similar to the sex-obsessed quartet in “Girls” than they are to the more chaste debutantes in Whit Stillman’s 1990 urban fairy tale “Metropolitan.” They may fawn over shallow, self-involved boys not worthy of their attention, and they may fret about their own appearance. But they do so with the affected, somewhat haughty air of the Victorian novel heroines they likely idolized at their prestigious college (in this case, Vassar).

“Don’t you just love him? Wouldn’t you love to date him?” says the awkwardly sunny, aspiring modern dancer Frances (the always lovely Greta Gerwig) to her dowdier ex-roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) about her new roommate Lev (Adam Driver).

“Undateable,” says Lev and Frances’ other roommate Benji (Michael Zegen), every time Frances does or says something uncool. These people are quaint with a capital “Q.” Despite their reliance on cellphones and Facebook, their problems are rendered more old-fashioned by Sam Levy’s luminous black and white photography, which Baumbach selected, he said after a recent screening, to give the film “an instant nostalgia” (when the characters trade graphic oral sex stories or use the “F” word, it has a deliberately jarring effect.)

The central drama in “Frances Ha” is the gradual drifting apart of Frances, who bounces capriciously from apartment to apartment, and Sophie, a more stable publisher, who, despite her misgivings, decides to marry and move to Tokyo with her long-time beau. One day the girls are cuddling in bed, giggling about their co-dependency (“lesbians without the sex,” one of them says), making fun of corny boys that like them; the next, Frances is on her own, left without even pots and pans in her now-bare apartment. She’s forced into nomadic living, all the while watching Sophie blossom into adulthood.

At times, Baumbach proves just as strong at evoking Frances’ loneliness as he did when dealing with similarly indecisive characters in his 1995 debut, the more incisive “Kicking and Screaming.” Frances’ ill-advised last minute two-day trip to Paris—perhaps the least romantic cinematic Paris sequence ever—is a piece of comic brilliance. Frances oversleeps, meets no one of any significance after a long day out, and calls friends that don’t call her back—until she’s back in the States.

The script, by Baumbach and Gerwig, is often raw and heart-wrenching, as when one of Lev’s younger conquests tells Frances, “You look older than Sophie but not as grown up.” This is a brutal indictment, and somewhat accurate. When Frances lands a pathetic summer waitressing job at her alma mater, she towers, hilariously, over her petite coed colleagues. With her gangly frame, doe eyes and stuttering delivery, Gerwig has been perfectly cast. She’s the epitome of sexy gaucheness, and she’s paired nicely with Sumner, a willowy British actress who has a field day with Sophie’s Debbie Downer inflection and pointedly oversized glasses.

“Frances Ha” is certainly Baumbach’s most playful film. He’s wittiest when throwing in jazzy, jaunty music to amplify perfectly mundane situations (such as Frances getting a paltry tax rebate in the mail, or Frances “saving the day” by making late-night omelets for a hungry pack of returning bar-goers).

But the film often flags; scenes tend to peter out without a needed kick, or end with jokes that aren’t as quick-witted and delightful as Baumbach and Gerwig intend. For every scene that’s a surefire winner (Frances screaming at Sophie about the missing pots and pans), there’s a line trying to be insightful but actually making little sense.

“Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!” Frances yells at Sophie. What exactly is a “three-hour brunch friend”? Baumbach and Gerwig don’t really care if you’re lost. You’re either on board with these persnickety youths or you’re not. “Frances Ha” is a good-natured, frothy occasion, but its self-congratulatory snappiness can leave you feeling as alienated as its protagonist.

Asghar Farhadi’s “ThePast” deals with the same types of issues as “A Separation”: everyone separates. One couple has unraveled and another one is in the intensive care unit–literally. The only major difference here is that everyone speaks French and the story is set in a Parisian suburb, although you would never be able to tell. Farhadi found a strange villa by the railroad tracks with asymmetrical rooms and a toolshed out back, to help reinforce the idea of the past, as he stated during the press conference following this morning’s screening. But this house could be in Jo’burg or Prague. In previous interviews Farhadi had said he didn’t want to establish the setting too obviously as it might seem insincere, since he’s not a Frenchman and that might become too obvious.

Bérénice Béjo (“The Artist”) was tapped in the leading role as was A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim, both of whose characters are involved in a somewhat recent romance borne of the ashes of previous ones.

That “The Past” is an accomplished film is undeniable. Farhadi has mastered the skill of squeezing emotion and poetry out of the most discreet gesture or glance: a hand resting on another for a split second only to be abandoned again says more than lines of dialogue. But “The Past” is not as impressive a film as “A Separation,” and perhaps because we’ve seen it before, in “A Separation.”

Lucky the [few] viewers of Baz Luhrman’s “The Great Gatsby” who come to the film virgin of the book, without even a brush with it in high-school. They can dive into the vulgarity of the jazz age depiction, replete with fireworks, flowing champagne, Charleston and period sound-track (with a dash of Jay-Z for the would-be cute and saucy note, much like the sneakers in Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”).

They can spend a dazzling two-plus hours not worrying their pretty little heads about the eternal question of screen adaptations of great novels. For others, such as this critic–call it a generation thing– they will find it appalling. The only thought that sustained me throughout was that, just as for the miserable “Les Misérables” until recently showing at a Cineplex near you, the original literary version keeps shining through. There’s only so much a carnie flush with funds ($150 million at last count) can do, slicing and dicing it to show off as amusing irreverence and originality—both sadly lacking.

Not to say that a stiff and duly worshipful rendering of Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” is preferable. Jack Clayton’s 1974 version attempted just such a faithful conversion from printed page to screen but didn’t get our blood pumping either.

So far, reviews of the new “Gatsby” have unfavorably compared the Clayton version to the kitsch, colorful present one, considering di Caprio’s performance far superior to Redford’s—the older actor haunted back then by his pretty boy reputation. Cast comparisons may not be fair, especially as concerns the main character. Gatsby is a fake with pretensions to an elegant society that would chew him and spit him out as soon as accept him. Di Caprio is too physical, too vital to convey either this insecurity or his Daisy obsession–one senses he might walk away any minute, pressed by less romantic concerns. Redford, despite a rather pale interpretation, showed the necessary vulnerability. Also, evanescent Mia Farrow probably made more sense than round-cheeked Carey Mulligan as the spoiled rotten wealthy socialite who doesn’t know her own mind. And then of course, there was Karen Black as Myrtle, as always stealing every scene she was in. Which, in the present version, leaves perfectly cast Tobey Maguire in what is the principal part, if not the title one, narrating the sorry tale of hubris and blood in his oddly appealing quavering monocorde.

In the end, Luhrman’s “Gatsby,” set in an agitated and lurid jazz age, suffers from a very contemporary disease: irony and the inability to tell a story straight, obscuring the absence of both imagination and talent.

Four songs and four seasons provide the pace in “Young and beautiful,” (original title: “Jeune et Jolie”) the engrossing film by France’s filmmaker Francois Ozon (“The swimming pool”) in competition this year. They provide a neat way to organize the film but also reinforce our oh-so-wrong expectations as we settle into the quaint family vignettes which he tenders in the first part of his film: a semi-normal family (they smoke pot when the kids are not around but they are staunchly middle class) on a beachside vacation, adolescents gamboling in the sand. We (at least, I) love these cliches, they might make some of us nostalgic and will be destabilizing to others as things unravel later. Ozon makes us comfortable and then demolishes everything with such tact.

Isabelle, played by newcomer Marine Vacth (yes she’s young, and yes she’s devastatingly beautiful), vacations with her family in the south of France. Girl meets boy (Max) and a tryst between them which barely has time for a gasp of air is sacked after Isabelle withdraws into herself, leaving the boy befuddled. The family returns to Paris and life continues on. In the next scene Isabelle walks into a hotel room and talks with a man sitting on a bed who’s at least fifty years older than her and who unpleasantly comments that she doesn’t look like in the pictures (the ones posted online). Isabelle is a high-class prostitute who plies her trade in luxury hotels, leading a double-life with aplomb until one of her johns has a heart attack while they’re having sex and her world collapses.

Ozon’s film is intelligent, artful and engrossing. It’s everything you want in a film being shown at Cannes, where the expectations are often high.

Vacth reminds one of a cross between Laetitia Casta, Maiwenn and Arianna Nastro of Saverio Costanzo’s “The Solitude of Prime Numbers” (2010). Bearing the humanoid-like physique of a model –which she is—Vacth isn’t one to go to the end of each of her emotions (for lack of experience, likely, or an unwillingness. She’s commented that she doesn’t feel like she’s an actress) but she was perfectly cast for the role.

This is the first film which Ozon wrote and directed. It’s his second film in competition, ten years after presenting “Swimming Pool” on the Croisette.

There’s a scene in Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante’s film « Heli » in which a young woman returns home to find a pool of blood across the floor of her home and a family that’s vanished. The camera is set low to knee-height and shows her from behind as she enters, and then slowly withdraws out of the room upon making the gruesome discovery, the camera leading the way as she walks backwards to eventually lean against a wall and slowly slide down, her face hidden from us.

There is no music (in fact this whole film is music-free), which lends the scene gravitas. What makes this sequence strong, however, is what also makes the rest of the movie noticeably weak. The rest of the film is a succession of coldly-repeated scenes of the same length. Certain narrative elements are shown which raises the question, what does this bring to the story?

Escalante, a thirtysomething filmmaker who clearly takes a page from the playbook of Carlos Reygadas (in fact Reygadas helped produce the film), follows a realistic approach to filmmaking, but lacks a grammar of cinema, that knowledge which is more noticeable when absent than not. He hasn’t yet come into his own but when he does, three, five years from now, he will make some superior and memorable movies.

“Heli” so named after the dour factory worker who gets tangled up in a crime that pushes his family into the abyss, is still on the stand, the paint is drying. Escalante, a novice filmmaker who gives the impression that visiting the editing room is like selling your soul to the devil, has something to say about his country and he’s made cinema his own. But he needs time to mature.

CANNES – All aboard for the 66th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

“The Great Gatsby” by Baz Luhrmann unofficially opened the festivities this morning at 10 a.m. local time (fest kicks off tonight at 7:15 p.m. with the film’s premiere).

No need to dwell on the artistic indulgence that befits the director of “Moulin Rouge,” we’ve been down that road before. Luhrmann likes to do things big, but it ought to be said that the filmmaker can run a film set and surround himself with the right crew, there’s no way that such a film could’ve seen the light of day otherwise.

The time and the work that went into research for this movie (historical context, wardrobe, accessories, set design) is enough to make my skin crawl with admiration. Luhrmann and his associates have done splendidly well with it and the film is a solid success.

Negativists will claim that “The Great Gatsby” (as is the case with some of Luhrmann’s previous films) is like Disney on steroids, all opulence and agitation and not much else, while others might argue that The Great Gatsby the novel was not ever right for adapting to the big screen. And yet, Luhrmann has revived a popular book which has enchanted several generations, giving one of our most celebrated actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, an opportunity to turn out another dead-on performance. The technical feat behind “Gatsby” is simply stunning (the movie was filmed directly in 3-D) and even though Luhrmann assaults this cautionary tale with his gleaming aesthetic, you can’t blame the filmmaker for incoherence or inconsistence. Moreover the message, your past will always catch up with you, remains true.

SEE OUR OTHER ARTICLES

Cannes you speak French? (France makes a strong showing this year)

Lana Del Rey song “Young and Beautiful” a part of “The Great Gatsby” soundtrack

France figures highly this year at the Cannes Festival. As Auréliano Tonet noted in his lead article in the special Cannes edition of Le Monde, out of the 75 or so films competing for various prizes across all official and parallel programs, 33 are French. And that’s a boon for cinephiles, indeed. Because as the American majors have been busy turning out a circus-styled sequel-and-3-D performance and some key indie-minded filmmakers made their fortunes elsewhere—Lena Dunham and HBO, case in point—an uneasy vacuum has been created: auteurist American productions are truly few and far between. Meanwhile French production has yielded some quality works by experienced filmmakers and newcomers alike where inventiveness and shoe-string budgets coalesce with the urgency to create.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (“A Separation”) shot “The Past” in Paris with Bérénice Bejo (“The Artist”) and Tahar Rahim (“A Prophet”). Mathieu Amalric (“Munich,” 2005) is in two films, if I’ve counted right: he appears in Roman Polanski’s “Venus in Fur” as well as Arnaud Desplechin’s “Jimmy P.: psychotherapy of a plains Indian,” which I am very curious to discover. Three French productions with which Europe’s leading lady can make an impression on the jury presided over by Steven Spielberg.

Several other French productions round out this year’s program, like “Michael Kohlhaas” starring Mads “Casino Royale” Mikkelsen, the new Mahamat-Saleh Haroun film “Gris Gris” and “Young and Beautiful” by François Ozon, to name a few. A delightful program, which when complemented by some strong contenders (from the U.S. and elsewhere) make this year’s edition one of the potentially strongest in the festival’s recent history.