In Ira Sachs’ Frankie, Isabelle Huppert plays the title character, a movie star who, having been diagnosed with a terminal illness, summons her family to a Portuguese vacation villa. She’s used to getting what she wants, and what she wants now is to wrap up some family loose ends.
The loose ends in question are, well, loose. There’s her son, still deciding on his path a little too close to middle age. There’s her husband’s daughter, struggling with her husband and their teen daughter. Her current husband is there, along with her first husband. And she’s invited a friend who happens to be her son’s age, and who lives in the city to which her son is moving… Her husbands are focused with what’s happening with Frankie, but the younger folks are all absorbed in their own crucial life decisions.
As one would expect, Isabelle Huppert is superb as Frankie, a woman who toggles between manipulating her clan and silently contemplating her own fate. The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Brendan Gleeson as Frankie’s loyal and observant husband and Marisa Tomei as Frankie’s younger friend who brings along a surprise guest. That guest is played by Greg Kinnear, with just the right mix of decency, earnestness and pathetic cluelessness.
Frankie is set (and was shot) in Sintra, Portugal, and what a beautiful place that must be, with its whitewashed villas, charming cobblestone streets and ocean vistas.
I watched Frankie at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and I really enjoyed it. But the festival audience was very indifferent at the screening; I’m guessing that folks failed to warm to an ambiguous ending that leaves some plot threads unresolved.