feeling ‘frankie’
The directorial debut for Shona Auerbach, “Dear Frankie” is a delicate story about the lengths a mother will go to protect her child.
TEXT KATHLEEN PULLUM feedback
The directorial debut for Shona Auerbach, “Dear Frankie” is a delicate story about the lengths a mother will go to protect her child. Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), her nine-yearold son Frankie (Jack McElhone) and her mother (Sharon Small) have been on the move as long as Frankie can remember. Frankie believes his father is a sailor traveling the globe, when in reality he is an abusive lout and the reason his family is always on the run. Thinking he is writing to his dad, Frankie unknowingly corresponds by post with his mother, who doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth and who sees it as a means of learning what goes on inside her deaf mute son’s head. When Frankie learns that his father’s ship will soon be docking at their Glasgow, Scotland port, Lizzie must make the painful (if unusual) choice between telling her son the facts and finding a stand-in to act as dad-for-the-day. Set in a working-class town with down-to-earth, believable characters, “Frankie” is a touching tale overflowing with emotion. Mortimer shines in her role portraying the many facets of Lizzie: a protective mother, lonely young woman and burdened head of household. Gerard Butler as the father for hire creates great onscreen chemistry with Lizzie wrought with sexual tension and warmth and sympathy for Frankie, the son who is unknowingly pouring out his love out to a stranger. I was taken by the understated intensity of the film, the lifelike characters who are well-acted in all of their complexity and the stirring emotional elements of the film, which manage to dance the line of cheesy without crossing over. All in all, it was a refreshingly life-size movie involving people who can relate to each other and with whom you can relate — although it is definitely one aimed at the sentimental female audience. | 
