A New York woman (who doesn’t really have an apartment) apprentices for a dance company (though she’s not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.

Noah Baumbach immortalizes the big spirit and small life of a lovably goofy and idealistic young woman, adrift and alone in N.Y. Shot with past-tense tenderness in evocative monochrome, a millennial spirit ignites this new classic, which was both led and co-written by a luminous Greta Gerwig.