One of the greatest achievements of a certain kind of Sundance movie is the ability to shine a light on an experience or a community we hadn’t previously been aware of. This year’s stoic and sensitive drama Frank & Louis takes us behind bars, a place we’ve been many times before at this festival, but to shadow the taxing work of inmates taking care of those who have dementia, a specifically difficult job in an already difficult place. Petra Volpe, the Swiss writer-director, who last explored a far more known form of caregiving in Late Shift, an exhausting nursing drama, makes her English-language debut with a film inspired by the “Gold Coats” peer support program at the California Men’s Colony state prison.
As with her previous film, there’s real rigour to how she zeroes in on the grind of under-appreciated labour, but while Late Shift was more naturalistic and experiential, Frank & Louis is far more formulaic and emotional, a clearer bid for the heartstrings. It’s a topic that’s hard not to get emotional about, the slow loss of one’s mental abilities, something many of us might be horribly familiar with, and it’s a tough, rather hopeless experience to witness on screen.
