Frances Review
Graeme_Clifford's exceedingly mediocre film on the tragic life of actress Frances_Farmer provided the breakthrough role for Jessica_Lange, who gives one of the finest performances of the decade. Whether one accepts the filmmakers' notion that Farmer was a great actress and the tragic victim of a retrograde Hollywood, incapable of handling a very smart, troubled, and willful woman, there's seems little doubt that her nightmarishly repressive mother and a brutal, benighted mental health system share the blame for destroying her once-vibrant personality. Unfortunately, Clifford adds insult to injury in turning the actress' life into a tedious, superficial soap opera, devoid of logic or perspective. Aside from Farmer, all of the characters, including her mother, are painfully underdeveloped, none more so than Harry York (Sam_Shepard), a character invented by the writers to inject some romance into a tale of nearly unrelieved misery. Yet the film's existence can be justified on the basis of Lange's virtuoso performance, a miracle of intelligence, toughness, and sensitivity in a part whose emotional and physical demands left the actress drained for months afterwards. Michael Costello, Rovi
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