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A bittersweet ‘Frankie’

"Dear Frankie" is a small, enchanting movie set in and around Glasgow, Scotland, and centers on the yearning of its title character, a deaf 9-year-old (Jack McElhone), for a faceless father he knows only as a pen pal. Trouble is, the pen pal is actually, secretly,...

‘Dear Frankie’ brings emotions home

Scottish movie rings true as a film that deserves every heart it wins ... and it will win many. 'Dear Frankie' GRADE: B+ Rated PG-13 for language Running time: 102 minutes Nine-year-old Frankie is small and deaf and he misses having a father. So he writes letters to...

‘Frankie’ Is Truly Dear

I'M A SUCKER for daddy movies. I can trace the onset of my hypersensitivity to such films (meaning I get misty-eyed and inarticulate anywhere near stories revolving around the relationship between a father and child, especially a boy) to the birth of my own son 5 1/2...

Charade

Lizzie Morrison (Emily Mortimer) lives on the run. Accompanied by her mother, Nell (Mary Riggans), and her deaf son, Frankie (Jack McElhone), she flits from one small Scottish town to the next, barely keeping ahead of the abusive ex-husband determined to find her....

A Refreshing Dose of Reality

Lizzie loves her son Frankie. That is why she is on the run. Shona Auerbach's sweet and thought-provoking little film "Dear Frankie" is the complete and utter anti-thesis to the other two new releases this weekend. Those films, "Be Cool" and "The Jacket," are loud,...

Coming to a Heart Near You

One of four films showcased at this month’s Portland International Film Festival, Dear Frankie had already created quite a buzz at Cannes, where it elicited a 15-minute standing ovation. Showings at the Sedona, AZ and Cleveland, OH Festivals in March will round out...

Dear Frankie Review –

Dear Frankie (Shona Auerbach, UK 2004, 104mins) There is a quiet, yet distinct “once upon a time” quality at the heart of Shona Auerbach’s likeable, though uneven, debut feature, which is as much about the relationship of a young, single-mom and her deaf-mute son as...

BETTER TAKE A HANKY TO ‘FRANKIE’

FRANKIE Morrison, age 9, is deaf and doesn't speak, but he's far from dumb. He's a budding marine biologist growing up in Glasgow who pins a world map to the wall to chart the location of his father, a sailor who writes him regularly and whose ship, the Accra, is...

Dear Frankie Review – E Online

Dear Frankie, your mom is pulling one over on you. Well, Emily Mortimer has the best intentions when she crafts a ruse for her precocious, deaf son (10-year-old Jack McElhone), telling him that his father is a sailor willing but unable to return home. She even writes...

A mother’s love knows no bounds

DEAR FRANKIE. With Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, Jack McElhone. Director Shona Auerbach. (1:45) At Angelika, Lincoln Square. PG: Language. It sounds like the scenario for a sitcom: Single mother of deaf kid pays stranger to be father for a day - entanglements ensue....

A working-class heartwarmer

Set in a Scottish port city, 'Dear Frankie' is infused with tender family feeling. "Dear Frankie" stars Emily Mortimer as a single mother who creates a make-believe dad to compensate for the one her 9-year-old son has already got. Lizzie (Mortimer), Frankie (Jack...

Dear Frankie – People Magazine Review

CRITIC'S CHOICE DRAMA A young deaf boy, Frankie (Jack McElhone), tracks on a map the peregrinations of the merchant ship on which his mother (Mortimer) has told him his absent father is working. He eagerly pores over the letters that arrive for him from exotic foreign...

DEAR FRANKIE – LA City Beat

So much of our sense of contemporary Glasgow has come from the films of Ken Loach that one initially reacts to first-time feature director Shona Auerbach and writer Andrea Gibb as interlopers. However, Dear Frankie is neither facsimile of, nor poor cousin to, Loach’s...

Dear Frankie Review – SF Guardian

Dear Frankie Shona Auerbach's first feature is a Scottish seriocomedy that's bittersweet but perhaps just a little too low-key for its own good. Nine-year-old Frankie (Jake McElhone), his mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), and grandmother Nell (Mary Riggans) are...

EMBRACING MOTHERHOOD

A little back story before the focus moves to the star of this yarn, the lovely and amazing Emily Mortimer. That's not showbiz puffery -- it's how she was described in a film with those adjectives in the title. Mortimer's new movie, "Dear Frankie," was set to be in...

Like No Business I Know

Dear Frankie Released by Miramax Rated PG-13 for language The once low-key Sundance Film Festival just wrapped up out in Park City, Utah. The big story of this year's festival, according to the New York Times, was a madcap bidding war among major studios that broke...

Dear Frankie (12A)

In the hands of a Hollywood studio this would have become a sickly, sentimental mess. But in the hands of first-time Scottish director Shona Auerbach, this tale of a deaf boy awaiting the return of his father from sea is a sharp-edged gem. Single Mum Lizzie (Emily...

Midweek Gala

Dear Frankie Shona Auerbach /Scotland | 2004 | 102mins | 35mm | Colour Producer Caroline Wood Leading Players Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, Sharon Small, Jack McElhone Photography Shona Auerbach Script Andrea Gibb Editor Oral Norrie Ottey Music Alex Heffes On the...

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