Hannah Takes the Stairs
Director: Joe Swanberg
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 1.0
Mixed-up Hannah (Greta Gerwig) breaks up with her boyfriend (Mark Duplass) who really likes her, then proceeds to sleep around with her co-workers (Kent Osborne and Andrew Bujalski), which creates office tension. As with all of Swanberg's low-fi, DIY stories, I simultaneously appreciate the "Screw It, Let's Make a Movie" mindset and find that very approach (in his hands) somehow crude, depressing and fraudulent - Hannah starts off as a mess and continues acting in messy ways, and those extreme close-ups of nude, non-Hollywood skin (pimply, fat) or scenes of his 'characters' rambling or making odd observations don't heighten the sense of 'realism,' they just come across as being self-conscious (and, at times, irritating). It ends the way it began: Gerwig nude with a man in the bathroom, goofing around: so stunning! So truthful!
