REVIEW - FRANK (LENNY ABRAHAMSON)

There's not even a fine line between ambition and delusion. It's a blur rather than a line, a place where subjectivity and ambiguity hold court over the application of any one person's 'talent'. Ambition is casting Michael Fassbender in a role where his face is covered for the majority of the film. Delusion is expecting him to maintain an American accent for the entirety of the film. That's a piquant little point that Lenny Abrahamson's film makes, even if it does it quietly: anyone can try, but not everyone can succeed. And it's not just down to luck - Domhnall Gleeson's hapless Jon just isn't very good at writing music. It's here that Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan ought to have beached this character, but their insistence on his everyman status, and Gleeson's overwhelming insipidness as an actor, waters down the impact of an otherwise respectable film. There's considerably more colour and quirkiness in their other creations, which would unquestionably have been excessive were it not for the absurdity they and Abrahamson instill throughout. Their structural concept - essentially to establish a comedy only to allow it to bleed out and leave only drama behind - is far from revolutionary, but it's fairly satisfying once Frank reaches its eventual state of melancholy. Here, its hipsterisms are no more bearable, granted, but the material that surrounds them is. And one can sense that the creative team understands that; why couldn't they understand, then, that Frank's first two thirds are so hit-and-miss? That their lead character is a dud? Delusion? Frank exists in that blur between it and ambition. And subjectively, I wasn't impressed.