Frankie Starlight

A Film Review by James Berardinelli

Frankie Starlight is ambitious, and, as is often true of movies that attempt too much, it's only partially successful. The film tries to follow multi-character stories in three different time frames, using a voiceover narrative to connect everything. Parts work; parts don't. Individual enjoyment of Frankie Starlight will largely depend upon which aspects of the film you choose to focus on. The wraparound story tells the tale of a modern-day Irish author, Frank Bois (Corban Walker), who is submitting his manuscript, Nightstalk (as in Nights Talk, not Night Stalk), to an editor. The book is immediately snapped up by Penguin Press for publication. An overnight success, Frank can't help but wonder whether his good fortune is due to the quality of his work or to his physical stature -- he's a dwarf. So he spends long hours in his hovel of a home, drinking wine and stewing in his loneliness. According to Frank, Nightstalk is an intermingling of astronomy with the stories of his and his mother's lives. Frankie Starlight's ambitious agenda is to transform the events of Nightstalk from text to screen images by means of lengthy flashbacks. These forays into the past start out with promise, as we first meet Bernadette (Anne Parillaud), Frank's mother, in Normandy, days before the Allied invasion. The setting soon changes to Ireland. Unfortunately, once the shores of France are behind Bernadette, the story starts glossing over key plot elements. Characterization becomes spotty as the film gropes for an anchor. Ultimately, Frankie Starlight is saved from incoherent oblivion by the birth of Bernadette's son. While Parrillaud's character continues to be paper-thin, the young Frank (Alan Pentony) quickly asserts himself. Soon, our attention -- not to mention our sympathy -- is vested exclusively in him. Bernadette becomes an almost unwanted distraction. The last third of the movie is by far the best. Taking place in the present, it brings together several loose threads from the past and weaves them into a touching love story. There's more emotional depth to Frank's relationship with his soul mate than is initially obvious, with director Michael Lindsay-Hogg handling this aspect of his film adeptly. The actors give heartfelt performances and the script avoids the trap of emotional artifice which ruins so many screen romances. Throughout the entire picture, stars are a key symbol. Frank eventually becomes an amateur astronomer, and many of the film's best sequences take place on a rooftop with thousands of points of light twinkling in the darkened canopy above. It is there that father-figure Jack Kelly (Gabriel Byrne) first teaches young Frank stories about the constellations, and there that the film draws to a close. More scenes like these would have been welcome. Connections, both made and missed, and the vagaries of life that lead us to react differently to the same people in diverse circumstances, form Frankie Starlight's thematic backbone. As with most of the film's other aspects, these are generally successful as they pertain to Frank, but rarely work with Bernadette. Parillaud's acting is too flat, and the sketchiness of the screenplay, which follows her life in broad strokes with few details, doesn't help. We're sure how and why Frank connects with others; the same can rarely be said about his mother. Frankie Starlight is more satisfying taken as a whole than when its individual parts are examined. The film is flawed, but there's still enough magic and genuine emotion to make for a pleasant movie-going experience. Affability is perhaps Frankie Starlight's strongest quality. No matter how many problems you uncover along the way, when the final credits roll, you're more likely to be smiling than frowning.

Frankie Starlight

From the producer of My Left Foot (Noel Pearson) comes Frankie Starlight. Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Brideshead Revisted , The Object of Beauty), and starring Anne Parillaud (La Femme Nikita), Matt Dillon and Gabriel Byrne, Frankie Starlight is a film about love, life, laughter and the occasional miracle. Set in post-World War II Ireland, this is the story of Frankie and his mother Bernadette (Parillaud) who, as an 18-year old girl, left France smuggled aboard an American troop ship in return for sexual favors. Put ashore in Ireland, the penniless Bernadette gives birth to a son, Frankie. Through the kindness of customs officer Jack Kelly (Byrne), Bernadette is able to raise Frankie in Dublin. Jack teaches Frankie about the stars, sparking in him a lifelong mystical obsession with the cosmos. As an adult, Frankie weaves his love for and knowledge of astronomy into a novel based on his recollections of his mother's relationships with Kelly and an ex-GI (Dillon). After his book is published and he moves from isolation to potential celebrity, we discover how his mother's colorful exploits shaped Frankie's life. Frankie Starlight is based on Chet Raymo's best-selling novel entitled "The Dork of Cork." Raymo is a lecturer in astronomy at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, but has spent every summer for the last 16 years in the village of Vantry, County Kerry. It is the combination of his knowledge of the stars and time spent in Ireland that inspired him to write this magical tale of love and the stars. In the summer of 1993 Raymo sent his new novel to Noel Pearson, the producer of My Left Foot and The Field. "It was one of these books that had shamrocks and stars and leprechauns all over the cover so I didn't read it for ages" says Pearson. "Then one day I just flicked open the cover and there was a sticker in it saying, 'this could be your right foot.' That evening I began reading it at 9 pm and put it down at 7 am the next morning." Pearson then gave the novel to Michael Lindsay-Hogg who read it, met with Pearson a couple of times, and decided to direct the film. The story, which spans over 30 years, is set in France, Ireland and the United States. Shot on location in Ireland, a French village was constructed on a farm in County Kildare, and the Normandy scenes were done on beaches on the east coast of Ireland. The central character, Frank Bois, is played by two newcomers to the screen, Alan Pentony as the younger Frankie, and Corban Walker as the older one. Walker, a well-known sculptor in Dublin, was cast after just one screen test. Pentony was more difficult to find. Pearson explains, "We had a hard time finding young Frankie as we had to match him to someone fifteen years later. Nuala Moiselle, the casting director, searched the length and breadth of Ireland and finally stumbled upon Alan in Drogheda. He had the exact qualities we were looking for- fresh, warm and appealing." Anne Parillaud plays Bernadette, Frankie's beautiful French mother. Parillaud read the script once and her agent called to ask if she could do it. She flew from an island off Brittany on a Tuesday, met with Pearson and Lindsay-Hogg on Wednesday, and the deal was done on Thursday morning. By coincidence, Chet Raymo had used a picture of Parillaud for inspiration with the character of Bernadette while writing the novel. The character Jack Kelly, played by Gabriel Byrne, is a customs officer who befriends Bernadette after she is put off a U.S. warship while trying to escape from France to America after the death of both her parents during World War II. Jack for a brief time is Bernadette's lover, but then becomes more of a father figure to both her and Frankie. It is Jack who introduces Frankie to his lifelong interest in the stars. Byrne's reaction to reading the script was "I thought it was very simply written. It was just one of the best things I had read in a long time." The final stage in casting was to find an actor to fill the part of Terry, Bernadette's American lover. The script was sent to Matt Dillon, who had previously worked with Michael Lindsay-Hogg in the theatre, and he agreed to play the part. Interestingly enough, Dillon notes that "I always thought that because of my Irish background I would come here to play an Irish man, not an American." Chet Raymo was joined by Ronan O'Leary to co-write the screenplay, and by September 1994 Frankie Starlight was in production. It was shot for six weeks in Ireland and one week in Texas.