Dear Frankie review

Frankie is a nine-year-old deaf boy who lives with his mother and grandmother. As a trio they move to a different house every few months in order to escape Frankie's abusive father. But Frankie doesn't know about this: in his insular world he thinks that his Father is a sailor, away on a long voyage around the world. This is what Frankie's mother wants him to believe, and the film's title comes from the fact that she writes him weekly letters masquerading as his Dad from his ship, the Accra.

When Frankie discovers that the Accra is about to dock in their home town, his mother is placed in a quandary: should she tell her son the truth or not? She chooses the latter option, and decides to find a surrogate father for the lad for one day. Through a friend she finds a mysterious stranger who agrees to pretend to be the father. But inevitably this is a plan that has serious repercussions.

Shona Auerbach's directorial debut began life as a script for a short fifteen-minute film in the late 90s and stretching it to a 100-minute feature brings all of its flaws out into the open. This is a resolutely twee and more often than not banal affair, full of flaws in logic, characters doing unlikely things and plot holes that are filled with the most unnecessary solutions. Just where its theatrical future lies remains unclear, as audiences are unlikely to be turned on by its dour and flat nature. The fact that the boy is deaf seems neither here nor there, there are some forgettable shenanigans involving the local chip shop owner and the stranger, when he does finally arrive, hardly lights up either the story or the cinema screen. A scene towards the end, when the mother confronts Frankie's real father, only serves to heighten the maudlin nature of the whole affair.

Emily Mortimer sports a convincing Scottish accent as the mother, while Gerard Butler (recently seen as The Phantom of the Opera) sleepwalks through his role. The overall effect is one which cries out very earnestly to be taken seriously, but this is a pedestrian Scottish film which, despite being competently shot, is unlikely to have a long shelf life.

Paul Hurley