Roman Polanski has an interesting way of returning to tell the story of a simple person whose surroundings, while completely familiar, suddenly become alien and even dangerous. With ROSEMARY'S BABY, neighbors plotted against misguided Mia Farrow; in REPULSION, Catherine Deneuve lost her mind; in THE TENANT, another apartment became the center of some odd occurrences. Even in THE PIANIST, the main character, played by Adrien Brody, slowly gets the rug pulled off his feet as his surroundings become the setting for the horrific Holocaust.
FRANTIC came out in 1988 to critical acclaim but little notice but has since then enjoyed an interesting life on HBO who keeps playing it over and over again. A movie that tells the story of an American couple (played by Harrison Ford and Betty Buckley) who get caught in a web of intrigue while vacationing in Paris, France, FRANTIC is an exceptional and overlooked thriller that evolves slowly, but not too slowly -- deliberately -- and gives its main characters ample time to evolve from how we first see them to full blooded people in a nasty, alien, deadly situation.
Harrison Ford gives yet another of his powerful, masculine performances as Dr. Richard Walker, who is at the center of this intrigue, and his is a performance equally comparable to that of James Stewart in VERTIGO and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. As a tourist searching for his missing wife, Ford displays an amazing amount of control over his character who is virtually in every scene in the movie: we see how he goes from loving husband, to befuddled, to angry at the apparent nonchalance of the Parisian authorities, to flat-out taking matters to his hands, while thankfully not being overblown to the status of an indestructible male god wielding phallic guns that shoot endlessly for the plot's convenience and who not only gets his wife back but a sexy girl in tow. Watch for a quiet moment when he is talking to his daughter over the phone. We never cut to the daughter -- that would have ruined the sequence -- but the camera stays on his face as he speaks to her, listening to the haunting Grace Jones song that pops up ominously, and something she says gives us a hint he and his wife may have gone through rough patches, which tells layers of the Walker's dynamics together even though they're only seen together for the first 10 minutes. The restraint in his face is so intense that it's a wonder he doesn't explode in tears of rage and impotence, because he has to hide the fact that no, he isn't having a swell time in Paris, but also, Mom's gone missing, and no one seems to know what to do, and he is feeling like the world's closed in on him in this alien place.
A lesser movie would have had more exposition of the facts and used a more conventional approach. Polanski has always been a master of subtlety: the scene when Sondra Parker disappears is the best scene in the entire film because it's done without intrusiveness, which makes her disappearance the more troubling and even though Buckley only has several minutes of screen time, she is all we think about; the plot revolves around her. Never do we see flash-cuts; it's all left to us. Never do we see sudden red-herrings that lead nowhere -- here, like in the aforementioned Hitchcock movies, they build upon the story. Never do we see high officials closing in from all around -- this is a resolution that involves the players and only them. Music is kept to a low-key presence, scenes of violence only occur sporadically, which is uncommon for a thriller. Scenes are played out so we don't get too much information as to what exactly is happening, but not so little that allows for those pesky "surprise" endings. This only makes us go through what Ford is going through right to the end.
Interestingly enough, there is an extremely subtle comedy (also a Hitchcock trademark) interspersed throughout: scenes of emotional tension are followed by an almost casual references to humor, and much of it comes from Seigner who plays the tough cookie who only wants her 10,000 francs and even sprays mace on the faces of two Embassy officials (one of them played by John Mahoney) who don't give much help and also casually steals a wallet from a cab driver because, as she practically states, "He won't be needing it anymore." This is a great move -- to make this movie so totally dramatic would have made it feel longer than its 120 minutes.
FRANTIC is a stand-alone thriller from the 80s that feels anything but a product from that decade.
FRANTIC came out in 1988 to critical acclaim but little notice but has since then enjoyed an interesting life on HBO who keeps playing it over and over again. A movie that tells the story of an American couple (played by Harrison Ford and Betty Buckley) who get caught in a web of intrigue while vacationing in Paris, France, FRANTIC is an exceptional and overlooked thriller that evolves slowly, but not too slowly -- deliberately -- and gives its main characters ample time to evolve from how we first see them to full blooded people in a nasty, alien, deadly situation.
Harrison Ford gives yet another of his powerful, masculine performances as Dr. Richard Walker, who is at the center of this intrigue, and his is a performance equally comparable to that of James Stewart in VERTIGO and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. As a tourist searching for his missing wife, Ford displays an amazing amount of control over his character who is virtually in every scene in the movie: we see how he goes from loving husband, to befuddled, to angry at the apparent nonchalance of the Parisian authorities, to flat-out taking matters to his hands, while thankfully not being overblown to the status of an indestructible male god wielding phallic guns that shoot endlessly for the plot's convenience and who not only gets his wife back but a sexy girl in tow. Watch for a quiet moment when he is talking to his daughter over the phone. We never cut to the daughter -- that would have ruined the sequence -- but the camera stays on his face as he speaks to her, listening to the haunting Grace Jones song that pops up ominously, and something she says gives us a hint he and his wife may have gone through rough patches, which tells layers of the Walker's dynamics together even though they're only seen together for the first 10 minutes. The restraint in his face is so intense that it's a wonder he doesn't explode in tears of rage and impotence, because he has to hide the fact that no, he isn't having a swell time in Paris, but also, Mom's gone missing, and no one seems to know what to do, and he is feeling like the world's closed in on him in this alien place.
A lesser movie would have had more exposition of the facts and used a more conventional approach. Polanski has always been a master of subtlety: the scene when Sondra Parker disappears is the best scene in the entire film because it's done without intrusiveness, which makes her disappearance the more troubling and even though Buckley only has several minutes of screen time, she is all we think about; the plot revolves around her. Never do we see flash-cuts; it's all left to us. Never do we see sudden red-herrings that lead nowhere -- here, like in the aforementioned Hitchcock movies, they build upon the story. Never do we see high officials closing in from all around -- this is a resolution that involves the players and only them. Music is kept to a low-key presence, scenes of violence only occur sporadically, which is uncommon for a thriller. Scenes are played out so we don't get too much information as to what exactly is happening, but not so little that allows for those pesky "surprise" endings. This only makes us go through what Ford is going through right to the end.
Interestingly enough, there is an extremely subtle comedy (also a Hitchcock trademark) interspersed throughout: scenes of emotional tension are followed by an almost casual references to humor, and much of it comes from Seigner who plays the tough cookie who only wants her 10,000 francs and even sprays mace on the faces of two Embassy officials (one of them played by John Mahoney) who don't give much help and also casually steals a wallet from a cab driver because, as she practically states, "He won't be needing it anymore." This is a great move -- to make this movie so totally dramatic would have made it feel longer than its 120 minutes.
FRANTIC is a stand-alone thriller from the 80s that feels anything but a product from that decade.