Frankie redux

I caught a preview screening of Dear Frankie tonight, and I just might have liked it more the second time around than I did when I saw it at last year’s festival. I’m working on a full review at the moment, but for now, I just want to amend one of my earlier comments. I said before that the film’s climax is “a bit of a cheat,” but now that I have seen the film again, knowing what all the final revelations are, I can see that the film doesn’t “cheat” as much as I once thought. I can’t say much more without giving away spoilers, but what I will say is that the writing and acting in certain key scenes is wonderfully open-ended and kind of mysterious; there is more going on than seems apparent at first. I understand the film is very slowly expanding into more and more North American cities — it doesn’t officially open in Vancouver for another week or two — so keep an eye open for it. It’s a nice little gem.