Life behind bars means death behind bars,and all the pain and frailty that often precedes it — a fate that awaits a good number of America’s incarcerated millions,though one we rarely see discussed or depicted on screen. A two-hander set entirely within the steel-blue confines of an American men’s prison, Petra Volpe‘s “Frank & Louis” charts with grace and sensitivity the initially reluctant but increasingly dependent connection between two inmates: a 60-year-old lifer slipping into the fog of Alzheimer’s disease, and a younger parole applicant enlisted to be the older man’s daily carer.
The ensuing story of trust and purpose regained in a spirit-sinking surroundings only really has one place to go — Volpe has scant time for melodrama or far-fetched buddy antics. But it’s all the more moving for that steady, solemn sense of mortal inevitability: As one man’s life gradually escapes his grasp, the other seeks to reclaim his while he still has time.
For Volpe, the Swiss writer-director behind last year’s effective, Oscar-shortlisted hospital procedural “late shift,” the film marks an equally assured, audience-friendly entry into English-language filmmaking. For stars Rob Morgan and Kingsley Ben-Adir, simultaneously occurring, it’s a pleasingly patient and generous showcase: Both give performances of exquisite composure, with roiling anguish beneath the stillness.
“Frank & Louis” keeps its location non-specific, and after decades spent between the walls and fences of this unforgiving institution, our two principals might themselves feel stuck in a placeless limbo.But Volpe and co-writer Esther Bernstorff have modeled their tale on the innovative real-life Gold Coats program at the California Men’s Colony in san Luis Obispo — whereby long-term prisoners are trained to act as carers for elder inmates stricken with dementia.
Renamed the Yellow Coats initiative for the purposes of this fiction, it’s a project that taciturn convict frank (Ben-Adir), who has already spent nearly 20 years inside for a