We may be the only ones who really know Frankie.
His friends know one shade of him, and his family another. Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is who they need him to be—the teenage hooligan who runs around, stealing and smoking with the boys, or the son who spends time with his sick, dying father. But only the men he meets from Brooklyn Boys, an online site for gay men, know any shade further.
In Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats,” we come to know Frankie as a soft-spoken, hard-boiled egg, reliant on mystery to win over his acquaintances. It is what draws Simone (Madeline Weinstein), his new girlfriend, to him. But perhaps he is still figuring out his own mystery. Refusing to label himself (or, more importantly, see himself) as gay, Frankie struggles to keep his head in the game with Simone and to hide that part of himself at all costs, a struggle that grows more serious as the story continues. The film makes use of quiet, visual storytelling to unravel this compelling tale of societal fear.
This is not a coming out story; this is a case study of the difficulty of coming out. We like everything to be black and white. We will name someone as homophobic or a hooligan or any sort of label that tells others what we assume about a person. But Frankie is a puzzle that is slowly put together over two hours, in such a way that you can see the black and white converging to become an uncomfortable gray.
Dickinson does a phenomenal job wrestling with his character. You would do well to catch this gem of a film.
“Beach Rats” starts on Sept. 15 at Midtown Cinema, 250 Reily St., Harrisburg.
Author: Sammi Leigh Melville
MIDTOWN CINEMA
SPECIAL EVENTS
www.midtowncinema.com
Down in Front!
“Star Crystal” (1986)
Friday, Sept. 8, 9:30 p.m.
3rd in the Burg $3 Movie
“The Sandlot” (1993)
Friday, Sept. 15, 9:30 p.m.
Digital Theatre
“Falsettos”
Sunday, Sept. 10, 7:30 p.m.
“Peter Pan”
Sunday, Sept. 24, 2:15 p.m.
Monday, Sept. 25, 7 p.m.
Harrisburg-Hershey Film Festival
Sept. 15-18
Middle Earth Marathon
Saturday, Sept. 23
Stanley Kubrick Collection
“The Shining”
Thursday, Sept. 28, 7:30 p.m.
“2001: A Space Odyssey”
Friday, Sept. 29, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.
“A Clockwork Orange”
Saturday, Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.
