Frances

Rating:
Summary: OCCUPATION? "**********"
Review: It's THAT line that sums up the entire Hollywood experience!
If you don't know what it is - that's Miss Farmer's reply in court to the Judge. Understandably, she's had quite enough!

ONE weeps for the movies she did not make, but our girl was way, way ahead of her time. No one would have batted an eye in today's world - even in the late sixties ....... BUT all of this aside - this is JESSICA LANGE'S BEST, best performance - she IS Frances Farmer. Especially towards the end - when she is doing 'that' interview, so difficult to tell the recreation apart from the original, and what a lady, lobotomy or not, the control is amazing! It's question after question about her past, and the questions are not too delicately put, but she smiles that soft little seductive smile, the cool modulated voice replies, and the Lady rises above it all, of course she is given the Edsel .......

KIM STANLEY? Another awesome artist as 'mother Farmer', positively makes Joan Crawford [if we believe the rumors] a Saint!

To say more would be to betray the story - but it should be mandatory viewing to anyone who wants 'fame'; or is thrust into Our Town. The movie also says quite a lot about the 'using game' and Boy, was she used!

Good sister to this? Kim Stanley in the earlier and rarely seen "GODDESS"

Rating:
Summary: Poor Character Portrayal
Review: Jessica Lange does not capture the personality of Frances Farmer well at all: when not hysterical, Lange portrays Farmer as somewhat simpering, rather than the bold, brassy figure that Farmer actually was; but I don't entirely blame Lange for this huge character portrayal gaffe: When viewing the extra material on the DVD, it soon become QUITE clear that the makers of this movie were more interested in themselves than their actual subject matter: The extra material included is nothing but a bunch of mutual back-slapping among a few Hollywood yuppies, and the references to Farmer are very much extraneous.

Rating:
Summary: Lange's Best Performance
Review: Jessica Lange gives one of the best performances of her career in this movie - it was one of the most impacting movies I ever have seen. She embodies Frances Farmer with haunting realism. One begins to care and really root for Frances thru out the movie. I know that Meryl Streep did the "accent" thing in Sophie's Choice, but quite honestly, Jessica Lange acted circles around her in Frances. If you have never seen this movie, take the time to watch it - it will impact you!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Film!!!
Review: Jessica Lange shines brightly in this telling of the story of Frances Farmer, the young gal who had a naturally rebellious streak, and who was constantly put behind the bars of a mental institution because she "didn't fit in" or conform to the norms her family expected of her.

This is a tale which will make one very angry, especially as it relates to the abuses of a former time (and hopefully not one that currently exists in these institutions). Sam Shepard is also in the film and he plays her sympathetic and romantic boyfriend who wants to try to "take her away from it all," and at one point, you think he's done it, until she's caught again.

The end is tragic and instructive, but by and large, this is brilliant storytelling. Highly recommended!!!

Rating:
Summary: Where's the Oscar?
Review: Jessica Lange, to me, is one the most talented actresses to have graced the screen. With each performance, she continues to enthrall her audience with a range that MAKES her the charactor she is portraying. Frances is no exception. The only question I have is, where's the Oscar for Lange? I'm happy for the Oscars she's received, but wondering why she was robbed of the ones she was nominated for and didn't win. Thanks Jessica, for giving of yourself and letting us be there with you!

Rating:
Summary: The only movie which made me feel like giving more stars.
Review: Never will you see better acting than in Frances. Jessica Lange's gaunt face displays some of the most chilling emotion captured on film. This movie, based on the real life of Frances Farmer is twisted and almost criminal. It deals with a very head-strong girl with wants and demands out of life...with drive...but she doesn't know where she's driving. It shows a story of a woman with a forceful personality, but no real knowledge of how to take care of her inner spirit and practical needs. It's a movie where you won't find yourself cheering for anyone...you'll only feel her suffocating desparation. A scene in which she smooshes an obsequious psychiatrist is painful...you see both how bright, clever, and how helpless she is to society's conditions. It's a lesson to the anti-social personality. It's also a movie which puts the smack-down to the idea of maternal instinct...it further proves that humans are just human...and they all have their issues. The mother is also haunting in her behaviour once society has given her the control to play with her daughter's life. A very tragic, but eerie story...you really have to be the kind of viewer who enjoys seeing the subtleties in human behaviour to get the absolute most of this film...right down to when Frances's mother pleasantly pressuring (with her whiny, grating voice) her to play a song on the piano...a song which bothers Frances to play. The movie disturbs...so be prepared. But see it. It's not something you will forget...Have fun.

Rating:
Summary: One of the few masterpieces
Review: No other word could possibly describe this film than masterpiece. Almost any adjective would be an understatement, but I will try to describe here in words what is one of the greatest works of art ever created.

It is no coincidence that of all the films I have seen, appreciated, and cared to review, only Frances and the 1937 version of Camille starring Greta Garbo share my opinion as being masterpieces. What makes Frances one of the best movies ever made? I could go on and on about Jessica Lange's brilliant, career-defining, tragic portrayal of the misunderstood heroine (which is at the very heart and soul of this film). I could describe in detail the wistful, beautiful, epic score or the powerful cinematography and supporting performances. At the very center of this film, however, is a genius screenplay. Perhaps long, weakly edited, but the lines and quotes - the unforgettable images, tragic love, and beauty conveyed in the words stand alone as a morally edifying, eye-opening, and cathartic work of drama. It was the reinvention, the renaissance of melodrama and it is dazzling.

Lines will linger in your memory forever. Jessica Lange's immortal cry to Harry, "Sometimes I wonder if anybody really loves anybody." Or Lange's biting and true remark to the psychologist who takes away her freedom, "Do you really think you know more about what goes on inside my head than I do?"

Frances was a dreamer at heart...a brilliant nonconformist who paid the price of a society expecting everyone to be the same. She was punished because she was different...because she had a mind and a heart. She no longer had any rights as a person - as an individual.

When Frances attempts to break away from the mold..from the Hollywood lifestyle that was "killing" her inside, her mother interferes and purposely has her committed to an asylum. Her only love - Harry - helps her escape, but by the end of the film we see it is too late for Frances to find happiness. Her life was stolen.

The most emotionally stirring part of the film is when Frances receives the lobotomy. We know she will never be the same dreamer that Harry fell in love with. We know that she will never, in fact, be able to love again, having her emotional and imaginative abilities "flattened" by the procedure. And this is the tragedy and main point of Frances - no one has a right to take away these very basic, natural human freedoms. The right to love. The right to think for oneself and be an individual. As the movie shows, even parents - who are supposed to love unconditionally - may have motives of their own and be responsible for the emotional destruction of their children.

The tragedy lies at the very end. Frances is, more than anything else, a love story. We remember Frances gazing out the small door window of the sanitarium, trying desperately to touch Harry - who we sense she deeply loves. And that is why she refuses to drag him down with her. In her mind, "nobody can screw things up like I can." And she can't let that happen to Harry, too, because he's the only thing that has ever been constant in her unstable life.

When, at the end of the film, it becomes clear that Frances no longer has deep feelings for Harry (due to the lobotomy), we realize that society has taken away her greatest freedom of all--her freedom to love. And at this painful discovery, one can only weep for the tears Frances has inside but will never cry again.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: The acting in this film is fabulous. Jessica Lange is magnetic and she empowers the screen in tour de force performance that keeps the viewer attuned to the action. The entire cast keeps you focused on what happened to this sensitive woman. Unfortunately, parts of the script only portray events of what happened to Frances Farmer as outlined in her autobiography, "Will There Really Be A Morning", but they don't really describe to the viewer the reason as to why she went through what she did. There are many theories that Farmer was just not happy in Hollywood. However, if one wants to see the most electric biographical portrayal ever depicted on screen, Minnesota native Jessica Lange is a must see in Frances.

Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Film Worthy of An Oscar!
Review: The film starts off with a young girl who shocks her local community by writing an essay that questions the existence of the god. She wifully speaks her mind and becomes the centre of attention and becomes a star. However comsumed with alcohol and fear to commit she suffers from her own undoing. This is a tragic film and would be very difficult to sit through and watch no matter how well it was made. Jessica Lange's performance is unquestionably her best and perhaps the most memorable in her career. This film deserved an Oscar.

Rating:
Summary: AN AWESOME BIOGRAPHIC FILM.
Review: The tragically ill-fated and morbidly fascinating life of Frances Farmer, the stage-trained actress who hailed from Seattle and wowed the critics with a handful of performances in the movies from 1936-1942. While many people today may have never heard of the once fairly popular and definitely controversial actress, her story is intensely powerful, and Jessica Lange does an outstanding job re-creating the woman of the film's title: Lange almost eerily resembles Farmer physically as well. Born in 1914, Farmer was a headstrong rebel since High School when her controversial composition - entitled GOD DIES - was published in a local paper. Farmer traveled to Communist Russia in the early thirties, and was later involved romantically with playwright Clifford Odets, whose successful play - GOLDEN BOY - gave her critical kudos: she was brilliant in her playing of the female lead, Lorna Moon. While not a perfect film by any means, it contains potent episodes which really happened to a once-promising, beautiful Hollywood actress who succumbed to alcoholism. Frances was an individualist and non-conformist who couldn't handle Hollywood's artifice: we are never totally sure whether alcohol was the chief reason Farmer went whacko - it seems her mental state was brilliant but highly neurotic. Farmer's first husband, the actor Leif Erikson once commented thusly: "Frances was a dear soul but oh so tormented". After Farmer was released from mental institutions, the victim of various torturous "treatments", it was as if her spirit had died. As depressing and frankly shocking though this film may be, it's an account of one woman's descent into hell. For those who are interested in catching a sample of Farmer's greatest work on film, rent or buy Samuel Goldwyn's 1936 classic COME AND GET IT which was based on the Edna Ferber novel: in the dual role of mother and daughter, Farmer is nothing less than sensational, her natural playing being quite unusual for the time.