Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips - Mistress America (2015)

As Noah Baumbach’s second film of 2015, “Mistress America” shows a director hitting his stride. A screwball comedy about the relationship between two young women in New York, “Mistress America” is stuffed with outlandishly funny moments grounded in the fatuousness of self-absorbed people. The movie follows Greta Gerwig as Brooke, a boundlessly energetic self-styled renaissance women with New York wrapped around her finger. As her widower father prepares to marry a divorcee mom (Kathryn Erbe), Brooke finds herself thrilled with the admiration of her college-aged stepsister-to-be, Tracy (Lola Kirke). Faced with a personal dream on the brink of collapse, Brooke, Tracy and a few friends pile into a car heading for Connecticut, where complications of every kind arise. A hilarious take on the dynamics of female friendship and the unbreakable confidence of someone on the brink, “Mistress America” is one of Baumbach’s finest works. The score to the film was composed by the duo of Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (The Squid and the Whale, Tenure), former members of the dream pop band Luna and longtime collaborators of Noah Baumbach.