Isabelle Huppert sleepwalks through a film that proves even great directors are capable of crimes against cinema
Even the very best film-makers can lay an egg sometimes. And Ira Sachs has laid one so big that the walls of the Palais des Festivals may have be knocked down so it can be safely removed. This really is baffling, considering how superb his other movies have been, such as his complex drama Little Men (2016) and the wonderful lifelong-romance story Love Is Strange (2014).
But this is a blank, uneasy, pointless, variably acted multinational production, inertly set in the picturesque Portuguese city of Sintra – which is shot handsomely enough but with no special flair. Frankie looks like nothing so much as one of those late Woody Allen movies in a luxury tourist setting, only with even less possibility – in fact none at all – of any laughs. And no possibility of anything substantially serious, either.