The mumblecore movement in cinema has had notable ups, a few downs, but has so far been pretty consistent in my book. One of the films elevating it to a level of supreme naturalistic cinema is Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, a raw and potent look at the title character and how she floats through life from points A to B, living in post-college hell.

Hannah is played by Greta Gerwig; a woman of considerable screen presence who is only elevated by a charming array of supporting characters. During the first act of the film, she is dating Mike (fellow mumblecore filmmaker Mark Duplass),a listless louse whose impulsive decisions make him the worst kind of boyfriend. When he quits his job because at the moment he isn't satisfied, and after much contemplation, Hannah dumps him and becomes interested in her two coworkers at an internship in Chicago.

The men are straight-shooter Matt (Kent Osborne) and offbeat Paul (Andrew Bujalski, another mumblecore filmmaker),who lounge around in their office talking up a real storm of nonsense and watching their lives uncomfortably transcend into adulthood. Hannah also has a close friendship with Rocco (Ry Russo-Young),a woman who is known for helping her through tough times and even content to sit with her in the shower when necessary.

Swanberg's trademarks that appear to be continuous throughout his films are intimacy, sex, human communications, and technology, all of which seem to be shown here in some form. There's a high level of intimacy, mostly because the actors seem fearless in scenes where they casually change clothes and show full frontal nudity to the camera, and the fact that there are many shower sequences in the film where two characters will discuss things with each other bathing right beside them. This is a daring, provocative tactic, used not as a test on the audience's part, but as a way of showing humanity in its rawest possible form. One of mumblecore's main requirements is naturalism and here it is employed fearlessly through performances, events, dialog, and personal complications among the characters.

As I watched the picture, I couldn't help but feel that Swanberg and his band of six writers, most of whom are the cast as well, have an incredible eye for post-college boredom and the uncertainty of it all. This is a picture where events and plot lines act as a gimmick, but are more of a true life-affirming revelation that many, many people experience after college, where you are beginning to discover what you are going to be doing for possibly the rest of your life. If you are facing this sort of life-uncertainty, it's the kind of film that reassures you in the sense that others may have that same problem.

NOTE: Hannah Takes the Stairs is most likely meant as a metaphor, and I believe it symbolizes that she favors to float through life as an unambitious bubble rather than make the snap decision to ultimately pick a career and go from there. Or, "taking the stairs," if you will.

Starring: Greta Gerwig, Kent Osborne, Andrew Bujalski, Mark Duplass, and Ry Russo-Young. Directed by: Joe Swanberg.

An intermittent wobbly camera catches Greta Gerwig (as Hannah) and her friends talking, mumbling, eating, drinking, and keeping cool in the sweaty Chicago heat. The often glistening Ms. Gerwig goes from boyfriend Mark Duplass (as Mike) to boyfriend Andrew Bujalski (as Paul) to boyfriend Kent Osborne (as Matt). Hearing Gerwig and her rotating appendix chew ice cubes is annoying, but it's not as bad as listening to them blow trumpets. At least, you won't have to wait long for the star's best topless scene.

*** Hannah Takes the Stairs (3/11/07) Joe Swanberg ~ Greta Gerwig, Kent Osborne, Andrew Bujalski, Mark Duplass

Being obliged to keep company with a narcissistic airhead is just as enervating in film as it is in real life. Ample proof of this can be found in "Hannah Takes The Stairs", where the annoying affectations of the film's main character and her threadbare story-line seem expressly designed to test an audience's patience. We first meet our irritating heroine picking towel fluff off her body after taking a shower with slacker boyfriend Matt, before she heads off to work at an implausibly laid-back TV production company. Hannah soon rejects Matt in favor of nerdy office colleague Paul, and they embark on a desultory love affair until she starts to fancy yet another charisma-free work-mate. This latest prospect is a pal of Paul, so Hannah feels obliged to make an unconvincing display of inner torment over her romantic dilemma - and after she finally makes a decision, the narrative arc of Hannah's 'mumble-core' odyssey is pretty much concluded.

Hannah is so self-absorbed and inarticulate that she's unable to explain her capriciousness beyond a confession of "chronic dissatisfaction" embroidered with vacuous embellishments along the lines of "like, you know . . um . . whatever". Despite the repetitive drone of the film's banal improvised dialog, the actors always appear to be 'acting' and conscious of the camera's presence, which amplifies the cast's deficiencies with its own wobbly hand-held artifice. When the TV company's manager expresses exasperation about the folly of workplace romance in the penultimate scene, it seems like a rather shallow insight after suffering 83 minutes of excruciating tedium.