Director/writer Ira Sachs returns to cinemas this week with Frankie, an ensemble piece with a stellar cast including Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson and Marisa Tomei. With its multiple stories and disciplined time frame – it all takes place inside 24 hours – there’s a certain theatricality to the film, one that harks back to Sach’s early post-graduate days.
One of his first jobs was directing an opera in New York but, as he explains in the interview below, it wasn’t exactly his finest hour. He also discusses his approach to filmmaking – why he doesn’t have rehearsals, although he does individual run-throughs of the script with the cast; why he was aiming for a deliberately artificial and theatrical structure in Frankie, and how he regularly works with the same line-up of actors, including Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, and Alfred Molina.
Against the beautiful backdrop of Sintra in Portugal, Frankie sees a family brought together by the actor of the title. She’s having to face some difficult truths about her future and needs to make crucial decisions, all of which have to be talked through with her husband and children. But they all have their own lives, and they’re equally full of essential decisions which will profoundly affect their futures.
Sachs is currently working on his latest film, Passages, which is about two men who’ve been together for 15 years and the woman who had an affair with one of them. Its location has yet to be decided: and, while Sachs sets the majority of his movies in America, he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of filming it overseas.
Frankie is in cinemas from 28th May.
