The French have a fondness for Americana from the likes of Clint Eastwood, James Gray, Sean Baker and Ira Sachs who for this seventh feature film and first trip to Cannes comfortably moved to his first international shoot (we exclude 2007’s Married Life which was shot in Vancouver). A mainstay at Sundance and Berlin, his films have always been supported by major international film festivals so it’s no wonder that producers Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt joined the formerly titled A Family Vacation, Frankie for a France/Portugal/Belgium/US co-production and nice brochette of international stars with Isabelle Huppert as Frankie, Greg Kinnear, Marisa Tomei, Jérémie Renier, Brendan Gleeson and Pascal Greggory. SBS is handling international sales.
Despite a couple of supporters (our Nicholas Bell gave this a passing grade), this is not the Cannes debut that we had hoped for for Sachs — Frankie was poorly received by our international critics with the exception of one near perfect grade. The final American filmmaker in Quentin Tarantino is next.
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