Truly Dreadful Film

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This is a beautiful movie that is touching. Anne Parillaud character in this film is an innocent young girl who seems lost throughout the film searching for something, maybe love. This movie was supposed to be about a dwarf named Frankie when in fact it is really about a lost beautiful young woman named Bernadette searching for something. This movie deserves an 8 but I give it a 10 out of 10 because I just adore Anne Parillaud and most of her work. There are some things in this world that touch you almost inexplicably and this film is one of them. Today it seems like there are fewer examples of this. Maybe this would explain why most are numb and apathetic.

Spoilers. This is the sort of story that Southern writers used to be good at. Carson MacCullers, say, or Harper Lee, if they'd have thrown in a bit of travelogue. Maybe it comes from living in small, homogeneous communities in which the slightest of individual quirks draw attention to themselves. Somebody is a deaf-mute, or intellectually challenged, or a Jew. And the question the presence of such people raises is an interesting one: How can such marginal persons establish anything resembling normal relationships with others?In Ireland, when it rains gently, it is called "a soft day," and this entire movie is rather like that sort of Irish weather. The story briefly: Bernadette leaves a ruined post-war France on an American troopship and is impregnated on board before disembarking in Ireland, where she gives birth to a dwarf. I don't know that the dwarf really "stands for" anything, as did a similar figure in "The Tin Drum." The rest of the film alternates between Bernadette's early abortive attempt to escape her dreary life in Dublin and move to Texas with an ex-soldier who remembered her from the troopship, a nice guy really, and the story, set in the present, of Frankie, her son, who has grown up and become a successful author. After their return to Ireland, Bernadette is depressed and decides to end her distress. Frankie finds happiness with a girl he loved during childhood and now, reencountering her at a book signing, courts briefly and marries.All of the performances are more than adequate. The actor playing Frankie as a child is especially effective, with a frank, open, lovable face and a shock of red hair atop his truncated body and limbs. He's also smart, sensitive, and talented, and it's possible to see easily how he matured into an accomplished artist, though he carries his anguish and self-consciousness with him into adulthood. Bernadette seems to be in an understandable state of shock during the entire story, moved by whim and circumstance rather than deliberation. Matt Dillon's part is less complex than most of the others. He really loves Bernadette and adores Frankie the child and loses them both. leaving him with his own two children and a wife who has the temperament and moral values of a black hornet. The happy ending, if that's what it is, isn't tacked on willy nilly but evolves naturally out of preceding events.It's a nicely done fairy tale. It's low keyed in almost every way and insinuates itself into your involvement only with the passage of a bit of time. Patience is called for. I enjoyed it and, unless you have hunger pangs for explosive fireballs, you may enjoy it too. A warning, though -- these days I find myself enjoying almost every movie that doesn't have high speed car chases and explosive fireballs.

"Frankie Starlight" is a sensitive, plaintive, wistful and sometimes ethereal drama about the life of a man and his struggle with dwarfism. The film brings together an solid cosmopolitan cast as it tells the story of Frankie as both a man and a boy with scenes of each interleaved. Though the film is not evocative or compelling, it is mildly entertaining and well shot, directed, and acted. Good easy going stuff with little to fault.

Saw this film on TV last night, and was blown away by the performances of Alan Pentony and Corban Walker, as the child and adult Frankie. When I read the credits and saw an Acting Coach listed for them, I guessed they were first-time actors. This was confirmed by the Showcase movie host after the film, and makes their achievements even more impressive. Kudos to director Michael Lindsay-Hogg!Gabriel Byrne was also wonderful - charming and tender - the farewell scene in the park was heartbreaking in its understated simplicity. I'm not a big fan of Anne Parillaud - I saw her in "La Femme Nikita" and an amusing American vampire/cop comedy whose title I can't recall - and the charm of that doe-eyed silent gaze wears off after you've seen it a few times. Still, she conveys the mysterious allure necessary for this role, and it's easy to see why these men fall for her.Overall, "Frankie Starlight" is a lovely movie, and it's a shame it didn't do better at the box office. Anyone who loves the music of an Irish accent, as I do, will be charmed by that, even if nothing else in this beautiful story (which has a happy ending, by the way!) catches your fancy. Plus, the score under the closing credits was a gorgeous piano and cello combination which kept the mood to the end.