Frankie (Ira Sachs, 2019)

Whether by design or simply lackluster writing and directing, Ira Sachs' latest film demonstrates how people can respond to dramatic life changes in ways that are not particularly interesting. Perhaps this is because trauma sends us back into our default modes of behavior, which tend toward the selfish and reactionary. In any case, Frankie is a film about a woman facing the end of her life, attempting to gather her loved ones around her for a semi-official goodbye vacation, and also taking the opportunity to try to manipulate their lives one final time.

Frankie (Isabelle Huppert) is a famous Huppert-like actress. She is married to the taciturn but affable Jimmy (Brendan Gleeson), and has two adult children, a son (Jérémie Renier) and a stepdaughter (Vinette Robinson). They are gathering in Sintra, Portugal, a city with a great deal of Catholic lore: holy fountains, centuries-old cathedrals, and the like. Already this puts Frankie at odds with the family, since she apparently believes in God, whereas her husband and children do not. 

Nevertheless, the various characters frequently make very direct remarks about how enchanted the place is, how there is something about Sintra that makes them want to break free of their normal lives and made radical changes. Sachs is essentially telling us why the location is so important, a "character" in the film, if you will. But it feels like special pleading, the way Woody Allen builds a script around whatever glamorous European vacation he wanted to take. And in fact, the film feels like latter-day Allen on occasion, or certain moments of Olivier Assayas -- "problems of the rich and beautiful."

That may seem unfair, but Frankie seems almost aggressively lightweight, as if Sachs and co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias were not simply making a film about avoidance or nonchalance, but enacting it through the filmmaking itself. After all, maybe it is plausible that Frankie as a character (who, like everyone else, we only get brief glimpses of -- the film takes place over a single day) is just petulant. She seems more upset that her plans as a matchmaker have been foiled than the fact that she is in the final chapter of her life. And although Frankie makes a point to treat admittedly-banal boyfriend Gary (Greg Kinnear) with barely concealed contempt, one must wonder whether she actually thought hooking her emotionally grounded friend Ilene (Marisa Tomei) with her train wreck of a son was a good idea. (A series of interactions spied and misinterpreted by various characters toward the end of the film implies a different resolution, one Frankie can maybe learn to live (die) with.

I guess the upshot of Frankie really is, with enough money and beautiful scenery, even the worst of life's problems can evaporate into total distraction, a miasma of half-formed thoughts.