It will all come together in the end… sort of.
The H-Bomb: A father, Peter (Bernard Hill), is searching for his missing son, young Londoner Milo (Sam Riley) is moping in deep depression after his fiancé dumps him, flaky goth chick Emilia (Eva Green) tries to commit suicide as part of her art school project, and a masked man badly in need of a throat lozenge (Ryan Phillippe) roams around a futuristic city that looks like the fantasy love child of Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam. During all this I’m wondering, who the hell is Franklyn?
This weird, trippy British film, that flew completely under the radar here in the U.S., has a lot going for it in the ideas department, but falls just short of greatness. As stated above, there are four main story threads involving very different characters. Three of these stories take place in modern day London.
The fourth takes place in an effed up, dystopian nightmare world called Meanwhile City. It centers around a vigilante named Jonathan Preest, who, rather ironically, is the only atheist in a city where having religious beliefs is required by law. He is searching for someone called The Individual, a cult leader who Preest believes kidnapped and murdered a young girl. Phillippe’s Preest is basically your garden variety modern superhero; dark, mysterious, slightly unhinged, and talks in a deep, raspy voice like Christian Bale’s Batman or “Watchmen”‘s Rorschach. This story is also a bit reminiscent of “V for Vendetta” as well.
Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, the tortured artist Emilia, whose look ranges from hauntingly beautiful to freakishly… freakish, is back in the hospital after yet another suicide attempt. It’s all part of some video art project and at first seems to be nothing more than a stereotypically lame attempt to get attention from her wealthy mother.
However, it’s later learned that Emilia does have a dark secret in her past. French actress Green, who sounds more and more British with each passing movie, inhabits the role perfectly and brings to it the same mix of mystique and humanity that she brought to the role of Vesper in “Casino Royale”.
While this is going on, we are also forced to watch the dour Milo mope around in what is easily the weakest of the film’s story threads. In it, this pathetic, depressing drip of a character moans about how much he thought his cold footed bride-to-be was “the one,” and seeks the comfort of his best friends, and a few bottles of red wine. Then he runs into Sally, a striking young redhead who was his childhood friend, and the two start to hit it off.
This really is the worst of the four stories mainly because, writing wise, it’s the least interesting. For the most part it plays out like some half-assed romantic drama, and even after a key revelation late in the game, it just doesn’t measure up to anything else in the movie. Riley tries his best, but his character was just a frowning sad sack who I hoping would either get hit by a bus or struck by lightning. Oh, and Eva Green plays Sally as well, for reasons that will make sense in the end.
Finally there’s Peter’s story involving his search for his son. As we follow him, we find out that his son is a very troubled person and perhaps even dangerous. Hill plays Peter with just the right amount of dignity and anguish, and comes off like the seasoned pro that he his (he played the captain of the ship in “Titanic”).
First time writer/director Gerald McMorrow lets all the stories play out at the same time, often cutting back and forth between them. For me, that was a problem early in the film. It jumps around to the various characters in random, “21 Grams” style, and just as one story would start to get interesting, it would abruptly switch to another one. It does settle down after a while, but this storytelling style does require some re-adjusting on the part of the viewer.
I would say that McMorrow falls into that trap that many young filmmakers do, that he tries to cram too much into one film. He doesn’t let it go off the rails like Richard Kelly did with “Southland Tales”, but he does run that risk, and there really is enough material here for four films.
All of these story threads do come together (even the fantasy one) in a way that is fairly unpredictable and reasonably satisfying. This did get some attention in Europe during it’s theatrical run earlier this year, but, like I said, it went completely unnoticed Stateside. Hopefully that shall change now that the film is on DVD. It’s a cool, intriguing little movie that’s worth seeking out. Oh, and who is Franklyn? Sorry, you’ll have to watch to find out.
