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DEAR
FRANKIE
3/10
UK
2004 : Shona AUERBACH : 104 mins
The only surprising
thing about Dear Frankie - apart from how rubbish it is - is the
absence of Shirley Henderson among the cast. Currently one of Britain's
most talented actresses, Henderson often finds herself in dire would-be
comedies such as Once
Upon a Time in the Midlands and Wilbur
(Wants to Kill Himself), the film which Dear Frankie most
closely resembles. Both films take place in a desperately bittersweet-quirky
version of modern-day Scotland which exists only in screenwriters' imaginations,
their characters, dialogue and plot ringing tinnily false at almost every
stage, unconvincing in both their overall conception and their specific
details.
 Dear
Frankie is a clunky variation on the idea handled with much more skill
in Good Bye Lenin!
and taken to another level in the French/Georgian variation Since
Otar Left, whereby relatives end up going to implausibly elaborate
lengths to withhold a painful truth from a vulnerable family-member. Here
the 'innocent' character is Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf nine-year-old
who lives with his mother Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) and Lizzie's mother
Nell (a gratingly OTT Mary Riggans). The family is constantly on the move
as Lizzie still terrified of Frankie's dad, a violent thug who caused
his son's deafness years before. Frankie has no memory of his father,
and Lizzie wants to keep it that way - so she spins a yarn about him going
off to sea on a particular ship. Frankie plots the vessel's progress around
the world's oceans, and is delighted when he finds its next port of call
is the city where he's living. This isn't such good news for Lizzie, who
in desperation hires a man - unnamed, and billed only as 'The Stranger'
(Gerard Butler) in the end credits - to impersonate Frankie's dad. Complications
ensue.
When Dear
Frankie had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the official
brochure noted that it had "met with [disfavour] from the critics"
when featuring in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. "But then, at the
end of the day, this is not a critic's film" states the brochure
- as if critics were incapable of appreciating anything other than challenging,
arthouse fare. What they mean to say is that this isn't a film for "critical"
audiences - i.e. viewers who expect the films they see to hang together,
to be convincing, to satisfy. Dear Frankie falls short on every
count.
The basic
problem isn't the uninspiringly flat direction, nor is it the a predictable
MOR soundtrack choices featuring the likes of Damien Rice and much tinkly
piano. More troubling is the nagging artificiality that hangs over the
whole enterprise - Auerbach (working from Andrea Gibb's script) goes to
such strenuous lengths to (pointlessly) hide her Greenock locations, inventing
a very fake-looking local newspaper ('The Tribune') and even obscuring
the destination displays on buses and the 0141 dialling-code on estate
agents' signs. Instead Lizzie and Frankie live in the fictional 'Port
Howat,' complete with 'PH' postcode. The only flashes of real-world solidity
come courtesy of Butler in the tricky role of the strong-and-silent Stranger.
Spoken of as a potential James Bond, and The Phantom in Joel Schumacher's
upcoming Phantom of the Opera, he does his valiant best to inject
a bit of grit and intrigue into what is otherwise a thoroughly phoney-baloney
would-be-tearjerker.
14th September,
2004
(seen 26th August : UGC Edinburgh : press show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 58th Edinburgh Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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