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Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America (2015) is a breathless, funny, insightful new film that continues his string of films following millennials in New York. This string began with 2013’s Frances Ha and continued with this year’s While We’re Young. Frances Ha was told through a third-person perspective, keeping the film self-aware enough to acutely comment on the group of twenty-somethings who float around aimlessly in New York City with no ambition, barely supporting themselves. While We’re Young was told through the perspective of two forty-year-olds who look at the lifestyle of a younger couple with curiosity. But with Mistress, Baumbach finally allows a millennial, Tracy (Lola Kirke), to tell her own story and the story of a woman in her late-20s, Brooke (Greta Gerwig). And it is through this approach that Mistress becomes a far more accessible film to those whom it is about than Baumbach’s other films.

Mistress America tells the story of two kinds of young New Yorkers: the lonely college freshman trying to find a home after moving into college and the ambitious, well-connected, hard-working woman in her late-20s who cannot follow through on her ideas, causing her to drift along in the city without accomplishing much. Tracy doesn’t yet have her own identity in New York and is lonely, so she looks to someone like Brooke to provide her with a sense of belonging. Tracy tries to keep up with Brooke, but soon realizes that Brooke’s initially alluring exterior is a façade.

Mistress America will also connect with audiences who grew up on screwball comedies of the ‘30s and ‘40s since the film is essentially a modern-day screwball comedy. Brooke and Tracy are two mismatched individuals who come together almost by chance and have crazy adventures together (the entire second half of the film is one of these adventures, complete with quirky, superfluous supporting characters and hidden intentions). Mistress borrows heavily from films such as Howard Hawks’ beloved classic Bringing Up Baby (1938) and his equally-loved film His Girl Friday (1940). The latter film is particularly famous for its rapid-fire overlapping dialogue, which is directly referenced in Mistress during a bar sequence in which Brooke and a high school acquaintance bump into one another. As the conversation becomes increasingly heated, editor Jennifer Lame increases the pace of the editing to the point that a few lines are nearly overlapping in the style of His Girl Friday. This homage will likely be noticed by those who love classic screwball comedies.

In a recent New York Times article, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig discussed some other films that influenced them while creating Mistress America. One of those films is Albert Brooks’ great under-seen film Lost in America (1985), in which a couple (Brooks and Julie Hagerty) decides to drop out of society and live life on the road. Another film mentioned was Jonathan Demme’s comedy Something Wild (1986), which Gerwig presented along with Mistress America in a double feature at IFC Center in July. The film follows a dissatisfied businessman (Jeff Daniels) who is whisked away on an adventure by a wild woman (Melanie Griffith). And another referenced was Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), about a yuppie (Griffin Dunne) who has a nightmarish night in New York. All of the aforementioned films focus on yuppies who are disappointed with their lives and take drastic measures to find satisfaction (much like the characters in many classic screwball comedies). Brooks’, Hagerty’s, and Daniels’ characters all share this dissatisfaction and search for a place in which they feel fulfilled – a place to call home. They are scared yet also excited by those who live wilder lives.

In Mistress, Brooke is the yuppie, but Tracy’s struggles more closely mirror those of the yuppies in Something Wild, Lost in America and After Hours. (At a Q&A sneak preview of the film at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Gerwig explicitly noted that Brooke is like the women in Something Wild and After Hours.) Through this connection, middle-aged audiences can also appreciate and relate to Mistress America. By harkening back to 30-year-old comedies in both subject matter and tone (Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips’ evocative score even sounds like the score to a mid-80s comedy), Baumbach and Gerwig have tapped into cross-generational themes that will resonate far beyond the obvious target demographic.

Screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby, Something Wild, and Mistress America are timeless because they explore subjects that play to who we are as humans. We all yearn for something wild, something different, the possibility of escape. Through these films, we are given the opportunity to live vicariously through the characters and discover how they change from their adventures. At the Film Society of Lincoln Center Q&A, Baumbach remarked that Brooke “felt like someone out of the movies.” She’s someone we’re drawn to and want to live through because, on the exterior, she’s someone who could only exist in a fantasy She, and the other wild women of screwball comedies, embody what many of us want to be. This is why we watch her and films like Mistress America, and this is why these films endure across generations.