Critics discover Greenberg's Greta Gerwig

With the release of Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, many film writers and critics are seeing Greta Gerwig anew. Of course, Gerwig is not new to film: she has acted, directed and/or written a number of low-budget independent movies. But starring with Ben Stiller in Greenberg, Greta is, according to the some, on the “Verge.” 

On Movieline.com, S.T. VanAirsdale talks to the star in “The Verge: Greta Gerwig.” For an actress who makes everything seem so natural, Gerwig talks about her preparation for the role: "I did a ton of back-story stuff: Journals, her family tree, where she grew up. I found the house I thought she might have grown up in, over in Burbank. I thought of her having done maybe two years at community college — a specific community college — and then transferring into the state system. I had very specific things that she had done. I don’t know, it’s hard to go into everything."

In “No Method to her Method,” New York Times’ A. O. Scott singles her out as unique among her peers: 

Ms. Gerwig, most likely without intending to be anything of the kind, may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence. She seems to be embarked on a project, however piecemeal and modestly scaled, of redefining just what it is we talk about when we talk about acting.

And at Boston.com, Joan Anderman in “Greta Gerwig, in Greenberg, moves beyond mumblecore” finds out why this part was so meaningful to the young star:

I thought, I know this girl. I felt my heart go out of my chest and into her. I think there is some Florence in me but as a person I have developed more defenses and boundaries, so that some of my work in being Florence was not a building up, but a breaking down.