Prepare
yourself for an act of slumming as performance art. If you were somewhat bemused by James Franco’s
decision to play a recurring guest-starring role on the soap opera General Hospital, you will wonder why
you wondered after watching Francophrenia
(Or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is), the actor’s latest extended
middle finger to his ever more beleaguered fans, co-directed with Ian Olds,
which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Evidently,
a baby has been kidnapped from the famous fictional hospital, but Franco (and
presumably Olds) considers that plot line too trite to bother explaining for Francophrenia’s audience. All we need to know is that James Franco magnanimously
lent his prestige to the soap, as long as he played a killer also called
Franco. Ostensibly, Francophrenia documents the production of an extra special episode
filmed on location at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, but anyone
expecting a candid behind-the-scenes look at the show will be sorely
disappointed.
Instead,
we watch long sequences of the clearly disinterested subject signing autographs
and sitting in make-up, while voiceovers try to pose a dichotomy between Franco
the actor and Franco, the character,
calling into question which is ascendant in any given scene. The problem is neither Franco is sufficiently
established to create any dramatic or aesthetic tension between the two. All we know is Franco the construct is a murderer, whereas Franco, the NYU film
school grad, co-directed Francophrenia, which
is absolute blue murder to watch.
Essentially, this film is like the old Airplane! sunglasses gag.
When you peel away one Franco’s smirk, you only find another smirk underneath.
Frankly,
Francophrenia never deconstructs or
subverts soap operas (or documentaries) in any meaningful way. We simply watch Franco float above it all on
his cloud of hipster superiority. While
allegedly an experimental film, Francophrenia
suggests the co-directors have only a cursory familiarity with the genre. The mere fact that Franco would deign to
associate with such low brow daytime dramatic fare is thought to be
sufficiently intriguing in and of itself.
Indeed, the only real take-away from the film is the nauseating contempt
Franco (the actor or the construct, it hardly matters which) so obviously has
for fans of the show. However, he might
just miss those rubes when they are gone.
