CHILD'S PLAY (SAINT FRANCES)

-

  

Every now and again, a low budget film comes along with real charm and an ability to grab you by the heart.

Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's 2006 comedy 'Little Miss Sunshine' is a great example of this.

A road movie about a dysfunctional family in a dodgy Volkswagen van trying to get their daughter to a beauty pageant, it had a smart script, loads of laugh out loud moments, touching drama and a great cast.

Alex Thompson and Kelly O'Sullivan's 'Saint Frances' is very much in that vein.

Mixing wry humour with tender drama, it tackles a very heavy subject - the consequences of abortion - and turns it into an absorbing take about a 34 year old woman who has lost her way in life 

O'Sullivan plays Bridget, a woman drifting through jobs after failing to make it as a poet despite showing promise on a creative writing course at university.

A lapsed Catholic, she hooks up at the start of the film with a younger man, Max Lipchitz"s Jace.

On the recommendation of a friend, she turns up at the nice suburban home of a well to do lesbian couple, Charin Alvarez's Maya and Lily Mojekwu's Annie who are looking for a nanny for their six year old, Ramona Edith Williams' Frances.

The interview doesn't initially go well and she fails to click with Frances but not long afterwards, Bridget is offered the job after the first choice doesn't work out.

With a real spring in her step, Bridget skips out of her job in the restaurant and sets about trying to connect with Frances who can be a handful.

After her dalliance with Jace, Bridget realises she is pregnant and breaks the news to him that she wants an abortion.

While he would like to discuss her decision a bit more, he goes along with it.

It is also clear that Jace is more into Bridget that she is into him.

Bridget has been hired to look after Frances to relieve the pressure on Maya as she raises her newborn baby.

However Maya is clearly struggling with post natal depression, unable to cope with her baby's crying and a lack of sleep.

And as Bridget's bond with Frances deepens, so does her concern for Maya and the course of her own life, as she becomes involved with Frances' vain guitar teacher, Jim True-Frost's Isaac 

What is most remarkable about Thompson and O'Sullivan's movie is how it takes often taboo topics and deals with them with the lightest of touches.

Menstruation, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, one night stands, post natal depression are all tackled in a very frank way rarely seen in movies.

And yet they manage to wring gentle humour out of Bridget's situation in a way that shows just how heavy handed Amy Schumer's 'Trainwreck' really was.

A lot depends on O'Sullivan's performance and she carries the whole venture off with grace and good humour.

But she also establishes a great rapport with Williams as the bond between Bridget and Frances grows.

Alvarez and Mojekwu are also impressive - the former breaking hearts as a mother struggling to cope and the former as a partner struggling to make sense of it all.

Lipchitz amuses as Jace, while True-Frost is suitably odious as Isaac 

Francis Guinean and Rebecca Spence add further light relief as Bridget's parents.

The obvious reference point for 'Saibt Francis' in 2020 is Eliza Hittman's understandably intense teenage abortion drama 'Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always'.

However both films take very different approaches to the challenging subject of abortion.

Both succeed in their own terms.

However Thompson and O'Sullivan's comedy drama is especially skilful in the way it tackles the subject from the perspective of a 34 year old who is wrestling with a Catholic upbringing and a sense that her life is going know 

'Saint Frances' is a film full of heart and it'll be interesting to see if its taboo shattering approach will usher in more films with a similar raw honesty.

It seems strange to attach the label "feelgood" to a movie dealing with such topics.

But that is probably its greatest achievement.

('Saint Frances' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on July 4, 2020 and was made available for streaming on video on demand services on July 10, 2020)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BRADY BUNCH (80 FOR BRADY)

-
Image
Here's a story about older ladies who are very, very into NFL. They would gather in a house to watch the football. And they have their own rituals as well. Here's the thing about one of those ladies who goes by the name of dear old Lou. © Paramount Pictures She is living with the threat of returned cancer. But when the Patriots make the Super Bowl, she goes too! Okay, apologies for the cackhanded attempt at  reworking 'The Brady Bunch'  theme tune's lyrics but anything to break the monotony, eh? '80 for Brady' is one of those comedies aimed fairly and squarely at the grey dollar, pound or euro just like ' The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'  or more recently, ' The Miracle Club '. © Paramount Pictures It's packed full of stars we have watched for decades hamming it up for the camera as they try to prove you're never too old to remain youthful. In this case, it's Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin - both in their mid eighties - Rita Moreno, wh
Read more

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY (THE SON)

-
Image
First we had ' The Father '. Now Florian Zeller has given us 'The Son'. Surely it's only a matter of time before the French playwright turned director gives us 'The Holy Ghost'? 'The Son' sees Zeller reunite with the English screenwriter Christopher Hampton, cinematographer Ben Smithard and film editor Yorgos Lamprinos after their last collaboration 'The Father'  scooped two Oscars in 2021 out of a possible six . © Sony Pictures Classics, STX Films, Black Bear Pictures and UGC Distribution Hampton won Adapted Screenplay, while Anthony Hopkins pulled off the big shock of the night by beating  the recently deceased and strongly fancied Chadwick Boseman  to the Best Actor prize. Hopkins returns for a brief but effective cameo in Zeller's follow up movie which is typically ponderous family relationship drama. 'The Son,' however, very much belongs to Hugh Jackman who, after landing a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion P
Read more

MUM'S THE WORD (THE SOPRANOS, SEASON ONE)

-
Image
Not long ago, the website Screenrant published an article entitled ' 10 Harsh Realities Of Researching 'The Sopranos' 24 Years Later '. The article listed off things the author believed were troubling about David Chase's groundbreaking HBO gangster show. These included a "failure to address the uncomfortable age gaps in certain romantic relationships, including older men dating much younger women, which can be uncomfortable to watch." It cited the lack of remorse exhibited by James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano "when indirectly hurting children, such as ruining his son's life for his own benefit, highlighting his own lack of empathy and disturbing behaviour." © HBO There was also an observation that while none of the main characters were "bigoted towards other races as a whole, they primarily had problems with the notion of their Italian culture mixing with others. They had no problems using racial slurs and mocking other races." Th
Read more