Franky, Frankly

Certainly one of the better drama-shorts out there! All the performances are pretty strong, and do feel authentic compared to the dreary Hollywood trash you see on display these days. As someone who comes from a background in horror, it's very rare for me to see a drama in this style and actually enjoy it. It's so hard to find something like this that actually makes you think and causes you to WANT to do a second viewing. Franky, Frankly succeeded.

One of the things I really liked was cinematography. The picture quality was definitely intriguing and really added to the overall experience without becoming distracting. Likewise, the costuming was pretty fun to look at, but it did have a distracting quality which we'll get to in a moment. The sets were great and the filming was done in a way that I could feel the warmth of the bookstore, the chilly air outside, and the tension in the cafe.

Some things to note - the costumes, while mentioned before to be fun to look at, felt somewhat unrealistic. Ms. Dayne is quite beautiful, but I couldn't help but start a mental commentary on how her outfit just seemed to stand out too much. Likewise, an unfortunate casualty of being such a beautiful and deep drama is that the plot itself might be hard to follow. It's definitely a cerebral short, and I don't know if the director's intention is to leave the deciphering of the plot's meaning up to each individual audience member, but I definitely had to go over it a couple times before I finally understood exactly what was going on. A filmmaker can do whatever he wants with his/her film, but to share your message with the world you need to make it accessible, and I feel like "Franky, Frankly" doesn't do that.

All in all, everyone should check this out; people who don't enjoy dramas or cerebral films (i.e. Memento... uhm, that's all I got. Netflix 'cerebral', stuff'll pop up) beware. If you get the opportunity, watch it a couple times and LISTEN to the monologue. Good stuff. 4 / 5