Frank the Bastard

IMDb
A woman returns to a small murky New England community where she grew up, located east of Acadia (French name for the region), to uncover the mystery behind her mother's untimely death. Some of the locals intend to stop her, though.




Variety

Andrew Barker

Senior Features Writer@barkerrant

Like sands through the hourglass, the soap-operatic thriller “Frank the Bastard” drizzles out tiny tidbits of expository information scene-by scene throughout its nearly two hour running time, and when it’s done, one is left with little more than an awareness that a unit of time has elapsed. A Nor’easter Gothic with a strong sense for its coastal Maine setting, but little understanding of how to draw the viewer into a convoluted mystery involving broadly drawn motivations and thinly sketched characters, Brad Coley’s slow-paced, overstuffed genre piece offers a decent cast, but should nonetheless struggle to do much business beyond VOD.

We’re first introduced to 33-year-old New Yorker Clair (Rachel Miner) as she suffers a debilitating panic attack just as she’s finalizing her divorce. Later that night, Clair turns to her free-spirited best friend Isolda (Shamika Cotton) for consolation, and she rather improbably suggests that the best way for Clair to dig out of her funk is to take a road trip to the gloomy, economically depressed Maine small town where she was raised on a hippie commune until her mother’s death in a suspicious fire when she was 6.

Given her reticence to discuss her past, it’s clear that Clair has some baggage, and her homecoming provides a smorgasbord of revelations to unearth. Not that she seems overeager to go digging: Clair spends the film’s first act either scarfing pills to calm her jitters, or else ambling around listlessly with no obvious objectives, which makes her an unlikely Nancy Drew. Fortunately, when she and Isolda roll into town, half the population more or less lines up to begin slowly spilling secrets. The graybeard hippies at the bar recognize Clair and regale her with tales of their salad days; a tart-tongued twentysomething (Angie Jepson) hastily becomes their new buddy; and Isolda strikes up an instant flirtation with a dashing older sailor named – yes – Tristan (Chris Sarandon).

The only people remaining at the former commune are Clair’s salty cousin Alice (Wendy Vanden Heuvel) and elderly aunt Dora (the late Ellen Albertini Dow), who are both planning to skip town as soon as the bank forecloses on the farm. They agree to let Clair and Isolda stay a while, and the two soon run afoul of Cyrus Gast (William Sadler), the oily junkyard kingpin who runs the town via his cretinous henchmen sons. Not only is Cyrus poised to tighten his stranglehold on the little hamlet by building a gas pipeline, but he also has a shady history with Clair’s parents, as well as a clutch of illegitimate children all over town.

One of these, Frank (Andy Comeau), appears midway through the film. A taciturn, possibly schizophrenic drifter who was childhood friends with Clair, Frank experiences moments of apparent clairvoyance, and seems to know more about Clair’s mother’s death than he’s capable of coherently expressing — much like everyone else Clair meets.

It might seem like piling on to point out that the sleepy Maine town hiding dark secrets is a milieu straight from Stephen King, that Frank’s character is merely a slightly more personable Boo Radley, or that the film’s thoroughly silly denouement could have been lifted from an episode of “The A-Team”…except all of these comparisons are made by the film’s characters themselves. Indeed, Coley’s screenplay contains a few witty references and sharp one-liners, but they often work at cross-purposes with the overall narrative drive, drawing scenes out and stretching believability needlessly.

Fortunately, there are several strong performances littered throughout, even if a few supporting thesps lay the salt-of-the-earth schtick on a bit thick. Cotton and Sarandon have a nice spark in their scenes together, Miner does well enough with a lead role that doesn’t always make total sense, and cast standout Vanden Heuvel proves to be both the most slyly funny and most intimidating character in the whole enterprise. Tech credits are TV-quality, but fine for the budget.

HollywoodReporter

A young woman attempts to uncover dark secrets on a return visit to her hometown in Brad Coley's film, described as a "Northern Gothic."

At times resembling the sort of deadpan satire recently seen in Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig'sLifetime movie A Deadly Adoption, Brad Coley's self-described "Northern Gothic" uncovers long-buried family and community secrets to an unconvincing effect. Depicting the travails of an emotionally troubled Manhattan woman who returns to the remote Maine village of her childhood, Frank the Bastard doesn't reward the viewer's considerable investment of time and patience.

Clair soon discovers that Thomas Wolfe was right to write that you can't go home again, receiving less than a warm welcome from her surly cousin Alice (Wendy Vanden Heuvel) who reluctantly invites the pair to stay at the farmhouse where she lives with her elderly mother (the late Ellen Albertini Dow, best known as the rapping grandmother in The Wedding Singer). Interacting with several of the locals, including the dashing older Tristan (Chris Sarandon), with whom Isolda develops a romance—yes, we're talking Tristan and Isolda, folks—Clair discovers that the town is essentially run by the venal Cyrus (William Sadler) and the seemingly countless members of his thuggish clan.The convoluted storyline concerns 33-year-old writer Clair (Rachel Miner), who's suffering anxiety attacks due to her recent divorce and the death of her father. So at the urging of her friend Isolda (Shamika Cotton), who wants to tag along, she heads up the coast to the small seaside town where her mother died in a fire. Their mission: to uncover the mysteries of the past.  

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She also reunites with the titular character (Andy Comeau), a childhood friend whose mental and emotional problems spur Isolda to sarcastically dub him "Boo Radley in the barn." As she digs deeper into Cyrus' hold on the town and his plans for a shady real estate deal involving fracking, Clair finds herself in increasing danger, at one point being thrown in jail and nearly raped.

The Tennessee Williams-style plot machinations are played out in tediously sluggish fashion via flashbacks and endless discussions in which the townspeople grudgingly parcel out tidbits of important information. It all culminates in a violent denouement in which, as if to demonstrate the adage that what goes around comes around, fire once again comes into play.

For all the melodrama on display, writer/director Coley creates no dramatic tension and fails to provide necessary dimension to his stock characters. While one would think, for instance, that Frank would play a central role in the events, he's largely a subsidiary, dull figure.

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While Miner is unable to compensate for her character's opaqueness, the supporting players fare better. Sarandon delivers his usual stalwart work as the rugged Tristan, and Vanden Heuvell is so arresting that one wishes she were in a better film. As the loyal friend, Cotton is given the lion's share of the best lines, and she runs with them, such as when she comments that the creepy Alice "puts the noir back in pinot" and mutters that "the whole state's a f—ing Stephen King novel." Now, if only Stephen King had written the film.   

Production: Big Indie Pictures

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