‘Mistress America’ Trailer: Greta Gerwig Takes Manhattan

From the very beginning of his career, Noah Baumbach has drawn comparisons to Woody Allen. Like Allen, Baumbach makes witty, urbane comedies of manners, mostly set in and around New York City. Many feature nebbishy Jewish actors (Jesse Eisenberg, Ben Stiller). Now we can add another Allen comparison to the mix: Baumbach’s become so prolific he’s releasing two movies in one calendar year. He’s an obsession with the New York Knicks, a thick pair of glasses, and a complete fear of technology away from becoming indistinguishable from the genuine article.

Just a couple months ago, Baumbach had While We’re Young, about a married couple who strike up an unlikely friendship with a pair of twentysomethings. Just a few months later, we’ve already got the trailer for his follow-up film, Mistress America, which opens later this summer and stars Greta Gerwig as an outgoing young woman who takes her new stepsister (Lola Kirke) under her wing and shows her the ropes of living in the Big Apple.

If we want to extend the comparison even further, it might be said that Gerwig (who co-wrote the film with Baumbach) is kind of playing his Diane Keaton. She’s bright, bubbly, eccentric, opinionated, and very funny. I could watch Gerwig do that rewind schtick all day long. Like While We’re Young, Mistress of America also explores the culture clash between different generations of New Yorkers (although Gerwig’s character, Brooke, would rather not acknowledge the age gap between her stepsister and herself). Mistress America opens on August 14, 2015.