Directed by Joe Swanberg. Written by Greta Gerwig, Kent Osborne, and Joe Swanberg
Hannah Takes The Stairs, Joe Swanberg’s movie about one girl’s romantic adventures over the course of a summer, opens with a watered-down curry-colored background upon which seemingly everyone involved is listed as a writer. With a little heart added for cutesy flavor, it’s like they’re all doing a group hug on-screen and taking their curtain call before the thing even gets underway.
With a barebones production to rival 2000s internet online sketches, wacky camerawork and freewheelin’ dialogue, Swanberg and his many collaborators have put together something that feels like a collision between improv theater and a commune’s attempt at a play. We’re real, we’re down-to-earth, we’re kooky, Swanberg and co. say, as we watch Hannah (Gerwig) shuffle through men, two of them her immediate coworkers in the three-person writer’s room she’s been hired onto.
Cue awkward tension and exchanges, fumbling romance, and naked sincerity. Hannah Takes The Stairs aims for quirky, touching, and relatable, but its idea of reality is very self-centered. This movie’s only relatable to comedy writers who wished beautiful women shared their interests (and found them attractive, most importantly) and bright women in comedy who feel insecure in a male-dominated field while battling the usual restlessness that is the birthright of 20-somethings.
The homemade feel comes with a certain chemistry between its actors, and Gerwig’s performance does enough to carry her scene partners, many of whom I wouldn’t buy as extras in an insurance ad, but the dialogue, which is clearly a lot of riffing, is only a step above listening in on the table next to you: marginally interesting sometimes, but the clumsy fumbling for realism is undercut by the desperate want for things to be funny. Peak theater kid energy at times, this zeal for wackiness, when all it musters is mildly amusing.
Hannah Takes The Stars and its raw presentation have its charms, but without a great script and undeniable talent delivering it, everything comes off as unpolished. Charisma and ability of actors can burnish what Swanberg has on his hands, but the final product is a navel-gazing semi-pro production that requires either excessive indulgence on the part of its audience, or for that audience to be primarily friends and family, in order to really connect.
Mikkel Frederiksen 