Review/opinion

'Uncle Frank'

An 18-year-old girl experiences something of an epiphany when she takes a road trip with her favorite uncle, Frank (Paul Bettany), and his special friend, Wally (Peter Macdissi), in Alan Ball’s “Uncle Frank,” which is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
An 18-year-old girl experiences something of an epiphany when she takes a road trip with her favorite uncle, Frank (Paul Bettany), and his special friend, Wally (Peter Macdissi), in Alan Ball’s “Uncle Frank,” which is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Alan Ball is one of America's most pre-eminent gay writers and producers. He won an Oscar for penning the screenplay for "American Beauty," and has received a plethora of Emmys for his two hit HBO shows, "True Blood" and "Six Feet Under." For all his mannered counter-culture twistinesses, however, he's a populist at heart, a rum-and-Coke with just a dribble of jalapeno juice mixed in to make it seem exotic.

His new film, "Uncle Frank," only his third picture as a director, features many of his previously established hallmarks: Southern families, homophobia, repressed guilt, raging alcoholism. It is also eminently predictable, down to the specific plot points Ball lays out like blinking neon arrows, and spends its first act struggling with the pathetic fallacy of mistaking the characters' lack of LGBT awareness with the audience's.

Initially set in 1963, we meet the titular Frank (Paul Bettany) as he has reluctantly agreed to return to his small hometown in South Carolina in order to pay tribute to his chunk-headed father, Daddy Mac (Stephen Root), on the occasion of the old man's birthday. Surrounded by a sprawling family, including Frank's brother, Mike (Steve Zahn), sister, Neva (Jane McNeill), sister-in-law, Kitty (Judy Greer), and Mammaw (Margo Martindale), Frank instead seeks refuge away from the family at large and spends quality time with his niece, Betty (Sophia Lillis), a precocious 14-year-old, who yearns to explore life outside the close confines of her cloistered family. Frank encourages her to "be her own person," and continue to get good grades so she has the chance for something different.

Jump ahead four years, and Beth née Betty has indeed followed her uncle's advice and gone to NYU, the same school in which Frank himself is a professor. Imagine her surprise when she comes to learn her beloved uncle hasn't been living with his professed girlfriend all these years, but a man, Wally (Peter Macdissi), with whom he's in love!

She finds out quite by accident, of course, attending a party at her uncle's house to which she wasn't invited, filled with flamboyant men, and extravagant gender-fluid couples, and the unwieldy cool, '60s West Village counterculture in full effect.

The next morning, nursing a hangover, Beth, now in the wise, properly meets Wally -- a preternaturally sweet man, with a love of his mother back in Saudi Arabia, and a pet iguana named "Barbara Stanwyck" -- right before Frank gets a call from home, telling him Daddy Mac has passed away.

Naturally, this tragedy gives the film an excuse to take it on the road, with the trio head down to South Carolina, where Frank must confront All The Things He Feels Guilty About, and his father's legacy of shaming and abuse; Beth must prove she is no longer a Betty; and Wally has to introduce himself to Frank's remaining family members under tricky circumstances.

It's a strange and often infuriating configuration: Ball spends the majority of the first act as if we couldn't possibly tell Frank's hidden secret -- ignoring, somehow, his interest in "Madam Bovary," his thoughtful gift for his crass father (an electric shoe polisher, that Daddy Mac carelessly tosses aside as if it were a bag of Brussels sprouts), and his sporty 'stache -- mistaking the family's general obliviousness (besides Mac, of course), for our own. Thus, we're treated to an exasperating scene shortly after Beth arrives in the city for school with her parents, having dinner at Frank's pad, with his obvious beard, Charlotte (Britt Rentschler), posing as his live-in girlfriend. And a scene where poor, unknowing Beth brings her supposed boyfriend, Tee Dub (Zach Strum), to Frank's office, in order for us to see just how much devoutly gay Tee is using her to get closer to her uncle.

Instead of including us in on the unawareness of the era, especially in the deep south, allowing us to peer at an earlier time when LGBT rights were light years away from joining conventional culture; he assumes we are every bit as shocked as Frank's family when his sexual orientation is finally forcibly outed by his father. It would be like watching a modern version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" without the filmmakers bothering to update its vastly outdated racial politics.

Ball's argument could be that, as always, he's making a production that takes nothing for granted from his audience's ignorance in such matters, but just who is the audience he thinks is going to turn out for the picture? Unlike, say "True Blood," filled as it was with sex, blood and broody vampires falling in love, there's little in the film to attract people outside of its more obvious venn diagram. And, I can assure you, they will be able to predict the film right down to the scene at the recently dug grave of his father, where Frank successfully confronts the demons of his past.

The writer/director's peculiar misunderstanding of his audience, and penchant for clichéd characters -- Wally, with his full beard, constant comforting, forgiving eyes, and penchant for hugging everybody, is like a stuffed animal come to life, albeit one who routinely wears black-and-white bikini underwear -- makes a hash of what would be a strong, lead performance from Bettany, a wonderful actor, long regulated to the sidelines.

For his work alone, the film might be worth the time of your attention, but for its peculiar manner of insulting our progressive intelligence, there's a solid chance you'll find yourself gritting your teeth at much of the rest.

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‘Uncle Frank’

83 Cast: Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi, Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Lois Smith, Margo Martindale, Stephen Root, Jane McNeill, Caity Brewer, Hannah Black, Burgess Jenkins, Zach Strum, Colton Ryan, Britt Rentschler, Alan Campell, Cole Doman, Michael Perez

Director: Alan Ball

Rating: R, for drug use, some sexual references, language

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

Playing on Amazon Prime.

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