Joe Swanberg’s latest film Hannah Takes the Stairs is an awakening—Hannah, played by Greta Gerwig, is a difficult girl, blowing through unsuspecting young professional boys like a Black Widow for the hipster age. She stops only to get drawing lessons, start impromptu trumpet duos and spend the day at the beach. It all comes to a head when reality catches up with her, and she has to deal with the consequences. In that, Hannah Takes the Stairs is a paradox: unnerving and cute; sexy and sad; a distant, though somehow, real look at a woman in a quarter-life crisis. It makes sense then that Swanberg’s directorial style is, in essence, a lack of one—all the scenes are completely improvised—and yet he goads his actors into uneasy situations where they open up and break down to the camera in a way that’s sometimes excruciating, but more often than not, reassuring. In other words, it’s raw human condition, in real time.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST HALF OF THE INTERVIEW AT IFCFILMS.COM

CLICK HERE TO READ THE SECOND HALF OF THE INTERVIEW WITH JOE SWANBERG AND GRETA GERWIG

This interview is part of an ongoing collaboration with IFCfilms.com, in which we will be sharing with them interviews with exciting people from the world of film. Previously featured were Julia Loktev, director of the terrorism thriller Day Night Day Night, Aaron Platt, cinematographer of the independent coming-of-age hit Wild Tigers I Have Known, and Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, co-directors of the faux cinema verité rock 'n' roll picture Brothers of the Head. We hope you enjoy the interview, and look out for many more to come in the future.

posted by Maxwell Williams on 9/13/2007