A soft and engaging acceptance of being gay in the South decades ago
Uncle Frank
Grade: B
Director: Alan Ball (American Beauty Oscar for writing)
Screenplay: Ball
Cast: Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code), Sophia Lillis (Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase)
Run Time: 1h 35m
Rating: R
By John DeSando
“He was the only adult who looked me in the eye.” Beth (Sophia Lillis)
Beth is a young girl in Creekville, S.C., in the early ‘70’s, facing changes of a high magnitude. She’ll be going to NYU and finding out that her beloved Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) is gay. Such a revelation in The Devil All the Time and Hillbilly Elegy would have resulted in the mayhem those two films this year would be comfortable with.
In Alan Ball’s more tender drama, Uncle Frank depicts sweet relationships of acceptance countered with ignorance and violence of a different kind: shunning or shaming but not physical abuse. The coming to terms with gayness is most often quietly disturbing or accepting.
In the heavy-handed motif of “being yourself,” niece Beth is lectured by her uncle, and she turns it on him as he resists telling his family he’s gay. The most joyous relationship is NYU prof Uncle Frank with his open-hearted niece, who anchors his love when he comes unmoored by his family.
In second joyous place is Frank’s companion, Wally (Peter Macdissi), whose Jewish-Arabic mix is a signal of hope for acceptance. The polar opposite is Daddy Mack (a terrific Stephen Root), who carries the burden of the South’s prejudice towards gays. Countering him is Mammaw (the always-reliable Margo Martindale), from whom you could bet acceptance.
Ball keeps the tone soft with the possibility of police interference if the male couple were discovered. Such is the way the South was made 50 years ago, and then again, the North in its own slow-acceptance way not a whole lot different. It’s humans we are talking about in the end, and in Uncle Frank humanity comes off not bad at all.
Enjoy the depiction of strong family at this holiday time, even with its resistance to progress a tad too slow. Look how long it took us to accept Donald Trump? And some still don’t.
“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?” – James Baldwin
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
