Fran (1985) Online

I think this is a great movie. The film was very realistic & believable, nothing was sensationalized, and nothing was miraculously 'fixed'. The characters were real (flawed but mostly likable & loving) people throughout the film. Because I found the film and the characters so raw, normal and believable I really liked this film. The film is about an irresponsible but loving mother (Fran) who grew up in foster care and would hate the same thing to happen to her own children. Fran's eldest daughter is sexually abused by Fran's boyfriend, and despite Fran's desperate & angry protests, she does end up in foster care. The characters in the film and the daily-life events and interactions in the film all seemed very realistic to me & I felt like each character could be a real person, particularly the eldest daughter.

FULL PLOT: Fran is a woman who grew up being passed in and out of different foster homes. At her longest-term foster home her foster father attempted to sexually abuse her, and clearly did not love her. Fran grows into a needy adult who is searching for love and acceptance. She has low self-esteem and doesn't really believe in her own strength/power to sort out her life and to be a good mother.

The film starts with Fran's abusive husband leaving her. Fran is a very loving mother to her three children, yet she also acts very irresponsibly and selfishly, abandoning them when she gets a new boyfriend. Her next door neighbor is her best friend (both woman have come from abusive relationships) and this neighbor supports Fran, offers her wise advice, and looks after Fran's children when Fran forgets about them for days on end.

Fran's new boyfriend begins to sexually abuse the shy, sweet & initially trusting eldest daughter (who is about 12 years old). Fran and her boyfriend go away on a holiday (that gets longer and longer), leaving the children behind. When Fran comes back her children have been taken in by Social Welfare. Fran doesn't understand why, and is extremely upset because she loves her children and doesn't want them to have the same childhood that she had, being passed between various foster homes. The social welfare worker tells Fran that her daughter has disclosed the sexual abuse committed by Fran's boyfriend. At first Fran doesn't believe her daughter, and pressures her daughter to take it all back. Eventually Fran has to face the truth. Her boyfriend ends the relationship with Fran. The film finishes with Fran coming to collect her 2 youngest children, and saying goodbye to her eldest daughter. The final scene is the eldest daughter staring silently at her face in the mirror after her family have left the room (clearly she will be placed in foster care at least for the immediate future).

At the end of the film the viewer is left wondering what will become of the eldest daughter. Will she end up with a life similar to her mothers? How will she cope with the abuse, with ending up in a foster home, and with feeling abandoned by her mother? I left the film with a mix of frustration at, and understanding of, the mother. However irresponsible and immature she was, she still clearly loved her children and wanted to protect them from the tough childhood that she had had. I left the film with a lot of concern and empathy for the eldest daughter, and hope that she would be okay.

There are few films that I have seen that focus on the impact of difficult situations on children (ie. children are caught in the middle of a domestic violence relationship). Parents (and other adults) actions significantly affect children. I appreciate this film for making the children very visible and for keeping the camera on the children during their mother's erratic behavior, and the molestation. There are also very few films that deal with child sexual abuse. This film does so, very realistically, and very sensitively - and helps us to really understand what it would be like for the child, and why the child might not react much/fight against the adult (abuser) who they trust(ed). I would like to see more films like this. I would also like to see this film come out on DVD. The closest film I have seen to this one is 'This Boys Life' starring Leonardo Dicaprio (an excellent film, where DiCaprio plays the teenage son of a mother who marries a man who becomes very violent and abusive towards DiCaprio).

Australian writer/director Glenda Hambly presents the title character, flaws and all, a mother who acts to effectively abandon her children in favor of a romantic life. However what saves Fran from condemnation is the great empathy created by the performance of Noni Hazelhurst. Hazelhurst isn't afraid to present Fran as stupid or ugly or child-like, her desperation highlighted in the scene where she begs her husband not to leave her alone with her children in suburbia. She also makes Fran's anger at the child welfare agency she calls the "Department of Good Intentions" funny, revealing an arrested development based on her own history of being a foster child.

Hambly's sad tale portrays the repetitive nature of abuse, with Fran acting the same way her mother did, and the accusation that her new boyfriend Jeff (Alan Fletcher) having abused Fran's eldest daughter Lisa (Narelle Simpson) aligned with Fran telling us that Jeff's father abused him. In the final image of Lisa, Hambly also suggests that she too will continue the cycle. The treatment stops us from viewing Fran as a tragic victim, since we don't see her trying to work whilst her children are at school, when her pride makes her refuse her to accept government support. The misanthropy of Fran's neighbor, Marg (Annie Byron, also an abandoned mother, doesn't progress into lesbianism, but whilst Marg's assessment of the men in Fran's life is correct, it still reads as a sign of resignation by Marg. Misguided Fran's priorities may be, but the idea that she needs a individual life apart from her children is valid.

The lighting in a fight scene is perhaps too dark to conceal the violence, but later Hazelhurst looks incredibly beautiful in a moment of reaction to Jeff.

I saw Fran a few years. Being a fan of Noni Hazlehurst I sat down to watch this. Fran is a very moving and often sad film about sexual abuse, neglect and abandonment. Fran is a loving but neglectful mother of three kids who believes that to be happy she needs a man in her life. Any man, it does not matter who. After being dumped by her abusive husband, Fran embarks on a search for a another man leaving her children alone. Her neighbour, a kindly divorced mother herself steps in to help. Finally Fran finds someone, only he is a sexual predator that starts to abuse her twelve year old daughter. After DOCs, *child welfare* step in and remove her children, Fran fights for them but refuses to believe her daughter. In the end she fights with her neighbour and friend, the man she has picked up leaves her and she loses her daughter and possibly her other two children as well. Fran is a sad character, loving but careless, unable to live on her own. She is the kind of person who searches for love but will never truly find it. This is in part because of her own horrible experiences as a foster child. Sadly her actions have condemned her own kids, especially her eldest daughter to this fate. Noni Hazlehurst brings a powerful and sympathetic performance to this film and the supporting cast were just as good. This is not a cheerful film and it has no easy answers or happy endings. No last minute rescues, just the sadness of a family torn apart by a selfish sexual predator that left wreckage in his wake and a weak and sad woman being left to cope with what has happened to her family.

These were great, these movies, back in the day. Now we don't see these kind of Ozzie greats, anymore, films of such frank realism and Fran is basically one of these that stares you straight in the face, and it's quite impossible to look away. I really like this movie a lot, and again we're reminded of just what a powerfully great actress, Noni is. She plays a mother, whose had a really bad trot through life, and has been through the wars. As a kid she was fostered out, and in a cruel irony, she had fostered one of her own kids out, her older kid daughter. She manages 3 kids, her real piece of s..t hubby is in prison. Her current, abusive ass...e boyfriend, Ray, and father figure to her kids, who she hardly sees, is away, mining. Her solace and relief is in her best friend, next door, Marge (Byron) a wise survivor, and former wife of Ray's, so it seems, which for her, has put a damper of critical cynicism of all men. Fran is a mess, a mother, of irresponsibility, the bottle, and abandonment. She does night pub prowls, a sex magnet to the naked male eye, looking for a new man, and sights her next one (a familiar Neighbors face) a relief, but one of misfortune later, you'll find out. This is a very entertaining drama, with some sad/verge tearing moments. It starts off with flavor in it's opening, involving a stalking creep. The film is really well made, and has great, real acting, Noni again, is great as always, but it's the confronting, sheer raw realism of the film that bites you on the a..s. Fran has another Oz 80'S which warrants, and deserves your attention, especially fans of Oz pics. Colorfully entertaining drama, that you can't turn away from.

This director really is like a low rent ken Loach/mike Leigh. Unfortunately, FRAN, has none of the cinematic prowess or complex politics that make the English masters rise above the kitchen sink.

The film is nothing more than TELEVISION drama. Turgid script, stolid story arc, overwrought drama. The characters speak their truth in a way that is unrealistic and terribly daytime television.

The writer aims so hard to invest complex stakes in the story that the characters are forced (like puppets) to react dramatically to the events. Because of this reliance on the motivating stakes of the story, the characters have no internal world. And certainly the cinematic world created is nothing short of ordinary.

Unfortunate that the creators of this stinker are now at the helm of deciding the future of Australian cinema. Perhaps therein lies the problem with the sort of scripts and directors being encouraged by Australian funding bodies.