Mistress America

Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America is such a dense literary text with so many fresh, surprising characters that it’s hard to find a single path in. So here are 13 ways to read it.

1. It’s like one of those parties that are like Tracy’s freshman experience: there’s so much wit and intelligence going on but you’re outside of it all. You want to fit in so you keep trying, like the students’ applications to the Moebius literary club, even though you know the in-crowd are phonies (nerds with briefcases) and the initiation is a shocking assault. So we can take the film that way: enjoying it from outside without trying to dig in. Or not. 
2. The film is like the Moebius strip, a single surface that curves back to itself with an illusion of depth. Like these characters in all their self-absorption. Like their stories. 
3. As Brooke finally admits, “Being a beacon of hope for the rest of the world is a lonely business.” Blonde Brooke is like America, the light unto the nations in her freedom, energy, independence — but she’s wearing thin. Tracy’s story exposes Brooke’s fear of having lost her vivacity, of having been found out, a carcass on the run. 
4. It’s a new take on The Great Gatsby. Tracy is the writer, the observer, enrapt at Gatsby/Brooke’s panache and glamour. Then the party’s over and in the dawn the shimmering shallows of Me-First America are revealed. When Tracy develops her new confidence it’s only Brooke’s delusion: “If I could only find my style, I'd be the most beautiful woman in the world.”
5. Every tale is a betrayal, we’re told pre-credit, but only if you let it be. The bitter former schoolmate’s attack on Brooke acts out in the second half: as Brooke says, the girl should be over that cruelty by now. If she isn’t it’s her problem not Brooke’s. Tracy’s story is a betrayal only if Brooke lets it be. In the event, she has kept the literary issue with it and at the end resumes her friendship with Tracy even though their parents’ broken engagement has ended their family relationship.
6. These heroines enjoy a sisterhood that doesn’t depend upon their being (half) sisters. They hit it off the way the flashy city mouse and the earnest, hopeful, easily impressed country mouse always do. Each meets the other’s need, one for a performer, the other for an audience. In an absurd parody of sisterhood Brooke’s ex-friend and betrayer Marnie-Claire gives Tracy a list of 12 questions — all irrelevant to the betrayal issue at hand — to test her on feminist issues. In an unfeminist way, Marnie-Claire admits to having married Dylan for money and is terrified at Brooke’s return to him.
7. There are no grown-ups in this contemporary America. Brooke talks about her mother’s death a lot but not about her mother; she’s Brooke’s excuse for drama. Tracy and Brooke are effectively on their own, whether or not their parents marry. Brooke’s father breaks off the wedding when Tracy’s mother refuses to embrace Catholicism. Brooke laughs off his assuring “Home is only a half hour away.” Psychologically they are much further apart. Tracy’s mother reacts to the broken engagement by retreating to Tracy’s college bed, weeping, then goes off for a weekend with friends in the Bahamas, abandoning her planned Thanksgiving with her daughter. Paradoxically, the parents’ split brings their daughters back together. Tony declines to go home to have fried turkey with jealous Nicolette and her father. Though Brooke is 12 years older than Tracy she provides no moral compass: “There's no adultery when you're eighteen. You should all be touching each other all the time.” She’s resigned to “end up doing something depressing, but young.”
8. Without traditional guides Tracy and Brooke visit a seer who consults with the spirit world. He only reflects what they tell him. They have to deal with their pasts. If Brooke is not in her body she’s four feet off to the left. 
9. Our Western problem is too much freedom to develop our selves. Brooke yearns for medieval times when everyone’s role in life was pre-determined for them, whether peasant or king. Now she has the freedom to find new selves for herself, new plans, new roles to play, and it’s overwhelming. Tracy grows through these experiences to find a new confidence and courage, to overcome her awe at the apparently successful Brooke. But Brooke swings through her dreams and failures ending up — applying for college, with the surprising rationale: “I’m no amputee.” Her world having collapsed around her, Brooke explains why she’s leaving: “New York isn't the New York I used to know. There's too much construction.” In LA she’ll seem well-read. 
10. Reality is what you decide to believe. Brooke’s cats are no longer stolen when she decides to give them to Marnie-Claire. Dylan buys into Brooke’s fantasy — only to bail her out of it, then start dreaming of an illicit affair on the side (“I like fat arms”). Brooke has to abandon her dream in order to thwart his: “I was not brought up that way.” To Dylan’s re-smitten “Whatever you're doing, it's working,” she wearily replies: “No, it isn’t.” Brooke can’t articulate her pitch — she needs Tracy to flesh out the fantasy.
11. The modern liberated energy is frightening. Tony needs “someone I can love, not keep up with.” As the pregnant and literary tax lawyer Karen’s husband seems never to retrieve her, he may have been scared off by her power too. The book club of pregnant women discussing Faulkner’s The Hamlet and Derrida are (i) Tony’s young intellectual’s fantasy, (ii) a twist on our expected Stepford wives notion of suburbia  and (iii) an extension of Brooke’s awesome flash. Of course, Nicolette beats Tony at chess. Her insecurity and jealousy do not augur harmony: “Why don't you just put pasta up her pussy?”
12. Dylan “just learned what case-sensitive meant, like seriously, yesterday.” Here’s what we’ve learned. In this film everyone is a sensitive case. Especially the character who seems the most airily successful and soaring. “Of course it's possible to hurt me,” says Brooke, “I'm the most sensitive person.”
13. Great party.