‘Uncle Frank’ is prime family melodrama
Alan Ball’s “Uncle Frank” is a wonderfully warm film about coming out and growing up.
It’s also an only on the surface shallow melodrama about coming to terms with your Southern family and yourself.
Neat trick, eh?
Not really. Ball, who won an Oscar for writing “American Beauty” and whose television shows include “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood,” specializes in the glossy treatment of Life’s Big Moments. “Uncle Frank” is a prime example. (It streams on Amazon Prime starting Nov. 25.)
★ 1⁄
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The film opens in 1969, with Beth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis, the young Beverly from the “It” movies) getting ready for
dinner with her down-home family in South Carolina. Her grandfather, Daddy Mac (Stephen Root), is an ornery old cuss. The family seems to fear him.
Margo Martindale, Steve Zahn and Judy Greer round out the family
Terrific actors like Margo Martindale, Steve Zahn and Judy Greer play other family members. Beth doesn’t relate to any of them — except, that is, for Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany), who moved to New York years ago and teaches literature at New York University. Frank doesn’t visit often — Daddy Mac is openly hostile toward him — but when he does he pays attention to Beth, and he tells her she is not bound by her family’s constraints. She can be whoever she wants to be.
Four years later, she is. Beth is now a freshman at NYU. She sees Frank occasionally, but they’re both busy. Then a date finagles their way into a party at Frank’s house and she learns that Frank, too, is who he wants to be when he’s away from the family.
He’s gay, and he lives with Walid (Peter Macdissi), whom he calls Wally, and
has for 10 years. (Britt Rentschler has a funny cameo as a chatty gay woman who fills in as a beard when needed.)
A scene in which Beth sits in Frank and Wally’s apartment and the three of them talk is beautifully done and so well acted. The three of them fall into a comfortable familiarity, even as they’re learning so much about each other.
Then the phone rings. Daddy Mac has died. Home isn’t exactly a welcoming place for Frank, but he knows he has to return for his father’s funeral. He and Beth borrow Wally’s car (a plot device prevents them from flying) and set out for South Carolina.
And “Uncle Frank” becomes a different movie.
Now it’s a road trip film, and at first a
pretty good one. Beth and Frank continue to bond, though Frank is clearly apprehensive about going home. We see periodic flashbacks revealing, a little at a time, why.
Then Wally shows up, tailing them in a rental car (a super cool convertible), despite Frank begging him not to come. This complicates things, as we see in instances of bigotry along the way. It also allows Ball to indulge in less authenticfeeling scenarios, leaving it up to the actors to make something of them.
Tinged with a Southern accent, Paul Bettany’s voice is a balm
Luckily, for the most part, they’re able to. Lillis really shines as a precocious and curious young woman, excited by changes and challenges. She brings a winning enthusiasm to the role. Unfortunately, once they get back to South Carolina, she practically disappears.
Macdissi plays Wally a little more broadly, but it’s moving when he calls his mother in Saudi Arabia — a mother he has to lie to about his life. Frank faces bigotry when he goes home. Wally faces execution by beheading.
Bettany is outstanding. He infuses Frank with just the right amount of inner turmoil and confusion as he tries to balance his love for his family with the wounds they have inflicted upon him — and as he tries to come to terms with his own identity among them.
Also, Bettany’s voice is a balm. Tinged with a Southern accent here, it’s smooth and smoky, a delight to listen to. (His voice when playing Vision in the Avengers movies is one of the best things in the entire Marvel universe.)
Ball piles on the melodrama in the last act, even though he clearly wants a nice, tidy conclusion. If only he had retained the simplicity of the New York scenes. That would have made “Uncle Frank” the film it could have been.