Exploring gendered space in Frances Ha : a cinematic analysis of feminist urbanism in New York City

Film, as a cultural artefact, not only reflects but actively shapes social, political, and spatial imaginaries. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theoretical insights into the social production of space and the ‘right to the city’, this article positions cinema as a critical medium through which urban space, gender relations, and subjectivity are negotiated and reimagined. This study examines Frances Ha to reveal how contemporary young women navigate New York City’s stratified urban landscape under neoliberal capitalism and heteronormative pressures. The analysis approaches it as a site where certain gendered subjectivities and urban spaces are aesthetically produced, negotiated, and normalised in cultural representation. It explores how precarious mobility, housing insecurity, and intimate relationships are shaped by broader urban power structures and heteronormative expectations. By examining Frances’s navigation of NYC’s stratified spaces, from gentrifying Brooklyn apartments to Manhattan’s elite cultural institutions, this study demonstrates how the right to the city remains contingently gendered, classed, and racialised. It makes a dual contribution: first, it advances feminist urban methodologies by rigorously demonstrating how cinematic analysis serves as both an epistemic tool and political practice, revealing the affective and embodied geographies often obscured by conventional spatial analysis; second, it intervenes in debates within critical urban theory by bringing feminist perspectives into dialogue with Lefebvre’s spatial thought – challenging dominant spatial orders and advocating for more inclusive and relational urban imaginaries. This article positions cinema not as a mirror of urban experience but as a critical tool for examining the gendered politics of space.