By all rights, ''Dear Frankie" should be unbearably sentimental bilge. That's certainly how it comes across in the trailers. But this wee Scottish drama takes a mawkish premise and, by playing its cards close to the vest, imbues it with quiet, careworn dignity. The...

3 stars (out of 4) Sometimes we enjoy movies even if we know exactly how they work and exactly how they're going to turn out. Director Shona Auerbach's debut feature "Dear Frankie" appeals to this sensibility, with its engaging, intimate story of a tender deception....

Most movies are afraid of scenes where people simply sit together without speaking. Maybe filmmakers think the audience's attention span will snap, or somebody will turn the channel. Maybe they're right. Still, "Dear Frankie" proves the spectacle of people silently...

A woman's flight from an abusive husband turns into a strangely heartwarming story of devotion in Scotland's "Dear Frankie." Emily Mortimer ("Lovely and Amazing") plays the mother, who's spent several years on the run, moving from town to town, taking odd jobs, doing...

In the well-acted, two-hankie weepie ``Dear Frankie,'' a 9-year-old deaf boy (Jack McElhone) longs for the father he believes is writing him letters as he sails the seven seas. It's all a lovely hoax perpetrated by the boy's devoted mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer,...

"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,...

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....

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,...

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...

CRITIC'S CHOICE 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 (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...

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, 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...

Lizzie, a single mom desperate for a man in the deeply moving domestic drama "Dear Frankie," anxiously scans the faces of every male at a Glasgow pub. As Lizzie, Emily Mortimer uses her dark, expressive eyes to register dismay at a bland balding patron followed by...

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...

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...

THE OPENING MOMENTS of director Shona Auerbach's "Dear Frankie" reflect the love and attention the filmmakers clearly lavished on this wondrous little gem: A boy carefully packs his few treasures up in newspapers and a cardboard box as his family prepares to move. In...

Moving performances almost overcome emotional conceits in tender drama about a boy and his fake father Sometimes no amount of good acting can make a film hold your interest. "Dear Frankie" stars newcomer Jack McElhone as 10-year-old Frankie, a deaf Scottish lad who...

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....

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 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...

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...

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...