[Film Review] Frances (1982)

Title: Frances
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Biography, Drama
Director: Graeme Clifford
Writers:
Eric Bergren
Christopher De Vore
Nicholas Kazan
Music: John Barry
Cinematography: László Kovács
Cast:
Jessica Lange
Sam Shepard
Kim Stanley
Bart Burns
Jeffrey DeMunn
Christopher Pennock
Jake Riley
Allan Rich
Jordan Charney
Lane Smith
Sarah Cunningham
Jonathan Banks
Gerald S. O’Loughlin
Rating: 7.4/10

1982 is such a competitive year for actresses, most prominently is Meryl Streep’s critics-consensus “the all-time best female performance” and Oscar-crowning SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982), which shamefully I haven’t watched yet. Thus unfairly other contenders didn’t stand any chance to beat her for that, but I never doubt that it was a nip-and-tuck between Streep and Lange in her tour-de-force sensation FRANCES.

Frances Farmer is hardly a household name among film boffins, she was a shooting star in the Tinseltown, whose defiant nature is destined for hemming herself as a fair game to the studio persecution, and the inhuman therapeutic treatments she receives in the mental hospitals are fierce indictment of our society’s callous de-personalization under the aegis of medical remedy, although whether the lobotomy operation was executed still lacks of conviction.

Farmer exhibits her rebelliousness from the very start with her religion-defying speech “god was gone” when she was simply a high-schooler, a fearless doll under the high-handedness of her control freak mother (Stanley), Lange’s rendition is begging description, an almost 30 years age-range and 140-minutes running time thoroughly proffers her an once-in-a-lifetime stretch to embody herself into this anguished persona, she minutely delineates how the life-force has been mercilessly ripped off her inch by inch and a belated and vehement face-off with her mother is the most theatrical moment and is the apotheosis of a heart-wrenching vicariousness, bravo to both Lange and Stanley!

Henry York (Shepard), a fictional character as the only man who truly understands Farmer and loves her unconditionally is the narrator, this concoction is a poetic license to add some solace in Farmer’s wretched life and a considerable move for its audiences’ sake, but meanwhile it barely serves a slush albeit Shepard and Lange work wonder together, the make-believe default also makes no room to expound why those two lovers could not be together, an over-romanticized tone may counteract the despondency of the film but it is also an untimely reminder of how close itself could be as brave as its leading lady Jessica Lange!