Handled with care

Movie: Dear Frankie which ought to be familiar to anyone who’s rented a DVD lately because it’s trailer has been a preview in nearly every one. While I’ve been long sick of the trailer, the entire movie is a charming little gem set in Scotland. The always engaging Emily Mortimer plays mom to deaf son Frankie. She’s told him his father’s away at sea, encouraged him to write letters which, unknown to him, she answers, and then has to scramble for a solution when the ship she made up ports in Glasgow. Faced with the choice of telling Frankie the truth and breaking his heart or not telling him the truth and breaking his heart, she hires the Phantom of the Opera who, with an understated intensity, influences all their lives. Best line: “I did not come up the Clyde in a paper boat.”