Leaving the comfort and familiarity of home for college is scary enough, but entering the pitiless maw of New York City makes it doubly so. In his third collaboration with writer/actress/lady love Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach serves up a scenario in which a naive freshman has a secret weapon: an older pseudo-sister to help her navigate the city as an independent adult. (Gerwig drew for the story from her days at Barnard College.)
Tracy (Gone Girl‘s Lola Kirke, younger sister of Girls‘ Jemima Kirke), the student, and Gerwig’s Brooke, a freelance interior decorator and self-described autodidact, aren’t related, but their divorced parents are planning a wedding that will make their step-sisterly relationship official. Tracy, a sleepy-eyed beauty who slouches through the film wearing the same nubby Fair Isle sweater in most every scene, is hardly an idiot, but she has a blind spot when it comes to Brooke, an effortlessly fashionable Holly Golightly type who talks—and talks and talks—a good game, but has serious problems with follow-though.