With "Dear Frankie," I discovered a director whose next film I will want to see. Scottish director Shona Auerbach's first feature film is "Dear Frankie," a wonderful movie about the love between a mother and son. There is a very daring moment is this film and it,...

Lies told in the name of love are at the core of “Dear Frankie.” They’re elaborate lies. They’re inventive lies. They’re lies written by a Scottish mother to her son to shield him from painful truths about his long-absent father. In director Shona Auerbach’s lovely...

For whatever reason, the moral difficulty of raising children is rarely examined with any semblance of literary seriousness on film. Instead, this divisive but highly accessible theme is regularly reduced to being good fodder for bad comedies. That may be good news...

Finally, my hero has returned. I've been waiting for him for a while now. I was beginning to despair of fantasizing like a teenager. Ever since the last James Bond, since Russel Crowe (Gladiator), and since Rocco the porn star, I've been anticipating my new hero as...

Films like "Dear Frankie" resemble good short stories. The investment of an hour or two reaps the reward of a rich and satisfying, if brief, visit into lives both like and unlike our own. The story told in "Dear Frankie" is sweet and heartbreaking and quietly told, an...

Sometimes, as a break from the shoot-’em-up ear-splitting of mainstream Hollywood, you just need to watch a sweet, loving film about a mother who tricks her deaf son into thinking a perfect stranger is his father. And no, that wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. Despite the...

Four stars. This seems to be the month for enchanting little films from across the pond. Danny Boyle's "Millions" opened locally last week, and today it's followed by director/cinematographer Shona Auerbach's achingly poignant "Dear Frankie," a film as grounded in...

Scottish drama avoids the usual pitfalls for heart-tuggers about kids When you hear the plot of "Dear Frankie," you may briefly feel a wave of cynicism roll over you. But the movie has been shot with love and wisdom, and its implausible premise doesn't get in the way...

Since you may only have a week or so to catch it, you might consider prioritizing a warm, humane Scottish movie called "Dear Frankie." There isn't any hype. You won't see anyone huckstering the film on Letterman, Oprah or Leno. "Dear Frankie" engenders word of mouth...

*** In the sweet and melancholy Dear Frankie, single mom Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) keeps up a logistically tricky subterfuge that could never work in modern life. She writes and mails letters to her deaf 9-year-old son Frankie, pretending they are from his seafaring...

Directed by Shona Auerbach. Starring Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone and Gerard Butler. Rating: 8 out of 10 First-time director Shona Auerbach understands what some directors never learn: that the space between words is as important as the words themselves. We see that...