Film Review: Francophrenia (Or Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is)

Film Review: Francophrenia (Or Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is)

By Catherine Sawers

 

 

Francophrenia is entertaining, for experimental film or otherwise. I went expecting a certain degree of navel-gazing and was delighted to see that the narrative agent is playfully indifferent to the ever-present subject, actor James Franco. Franco ceded the raw material – behind the scenes footage from an episode of ‘General Hospital’ – to co-director and writer Ian Olds, which was a wise editorial decision.

After scenes from the hair and make-up trailer and throngs of fans watching the taping, the film loosely parallels the story line of the ‘General Hospital’ episode, albeit without any exposition for those unacquainted with the daytime television show, broadcast on ABC. One soon grasps the absurdity of no-holds-barred melodrama; if one can’t make sense of the soap opera episode, good luck finding a reason why this film exists.

Perhaps that is the joy in watching this film. It teases out different camera angles and implied points of view as Franco’s stuntman and a mannequin take turns plunging over the edge of a tall building onto an art exhibition below. Actors and extras playing gala guests must recoil in horror each time as if it were the first. The violence is on par with PG-13 action movies and television dramas, but the repetition is what becomes gruesome. Knowing it is all make-believe means we can savor the situational irony—that, pretty soon, in the middle of so-and-so’s conversation, a body will splat at her feet. One wonders, ‘How far into that sentence will she get this time before she has to gasp with revulsion?’

The funniest aspect of Francophrenia is the running monologue in Franco’s head (it seems pretentious to say subconscious or stream-of-consciousness, as the voice-over was consciously added in post-production). The voice-over has no logical place in the visual story: it does not refer to Franco, the ‘General Hospital’ character, or necessarily to Franco, the actor. The voice-over is its own character, sometimes inhabiting its eponymous protagonist, other times awakening inanimate objects, such as the gendered and wheelchair-bound stick figures on a men’s room door.

Interestingly, the voice-over for the most part tends toward negative emotions; when a producer touches Franco’s arm, the voice says ‘Don’t touch me.’ When the men’s room stick figures gossip behind Franco’s back, they speculate about his sobriety and affinity for non-narcotic controlled substances. I won’t presume to psychoanalyze the more negative voice-over elements, but I will say that it constitutes one side of a bi-polar film. If the ‘General Hospital’ footage is the extrovert personality, the socialite that has to see everything and do and say everything ad infinitum, then the voice-over is the reclusive social critic, perhaps disgusted with other people, perhaps just bored.

The film is bi-polar, but it is not a synecdoche for James Franco. We are no closer to understanding him than before watching the film; if anything, a little farther. The repetition of key scenes in the ‘General Hospital’ footage and the layers of quirky voice-over achieve a level of subjectivity where ‘Franco’ becomes this term that people bandy about, but no longer refers to any concrete person or thing.

Francophrenia is at once cheeky and gruesome. Its celebrated element, I believe, will be in how its visuals and audio pull the film in opposite directions, and I would like to see more films make use of this tension.

Francophrenia had its North American premiere in New York City at Tribeca Film Festival, 22 April 2012.