Mentioned in at least some categories on some Oscar lists and included in the Museum of Modern Art’s ever-prescient The Contenders, Frances Ha unaccountably provokes extreme reactions. Surprisingly in light of the inoffensive story, there are those who not only dislike but vehemently detest it, while admittedly many more have found it charming in “a kind of instant nostalgia” b&w.

Not about an Asian lady despite the title -- from a Halladay surname too long for a mailbox slot -- the film is actually about nothing and does not resolve anything. Director/co-writer Noah Baumbach’s low-key “barest bones” is held together by co-scripter Greta Gerwig as the eponymous heroine who is in every scene and, as promo material indicates, does not etc. and is not etc. The twenty-seven-year-old non-California girl from Sacramento (her parents there are played by the actress’ real mom and dad) is a wannabe dancer but not a real one and lives precariously at various Manhattan addresses but is not a New Yorker or, except for the briefest of moments, a renter, either.

Temporary flatmate Benji (Michael Zegen) rightly points out that she is not destitute and that white persons like her calling themselves “poor” is an insult to the truly underprivileged. She can afford to spend two sleepless days and nights in Paris but is not a tourist, and she has a “best friend,” Sophie Levee (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler), who for much of the eighty-six minutes is that in name only.

Wishy-washily declining to move in with a boyfriend, she loses him only to be told on returning home that much loved Sophie is leaving their shared place to be with wealthy Reid “Patch” (Patrick Heusinger) and soon that she and this “fiancé” are relocating to Tokyo. This bickering couples’ later return and showing up at the two women’s alma mater – Vassar -- at which Frances is volunteering, is a stretch, and the openly lascivious female politician there is cheap.

The protagonist is not an airhead. However, she has little beyond vague plans which are really hopes, and much of what she does do turns out disastrous, sadly or comically so, or both, as when she insists on treating well-off Lev Shapiro (Adam Driver) but then cannot find a working ATM.

The effect is “funny, ha, ha,” as characters remark, with perhaps a sneaky title product placement, but also sad. As she moves from one address to another or, less, from city to city -- lazily identified in print -- there is no movement in a definite direction up, sideways, even downwards. Underneath the humor, she is wistful about being “undate-able,” as well. Game and not a self-promoting booster, always slightly outside the loop, she accepts what is dealt without complaint or anger.

Tiresome and whiney after a while, much the characters’ verbal humor is that of young hopefuls’ quasi-self-deprecation, a defense mechanism in case of actual failure. Frances herself gives no indication of learning as she goes along and threatens to remain forever the dreamy feckless Micawber.

The film should be appreciated more by women than men, and, with that, makes for a good comparison-contrast to Inside Llewyn Davis. Both 2013 New York Film Festival graduates share Adam Driver and both center on young but not all that young aspiring artistes in Greenwich Village, sweet lost Frances and selfish leech Llewyn. The feminine sensibility trumps the masculine.

(Released by IFC Films and rated “R” for sexual references and language.)