DEAR FRANKIE

Lizzie, mother of nine-year-old Frankie, moves her little family frequently to avoid Frankie?s abusive father. Frankie, who is deaf, only knows his father through fake letters his mother posts from exotic locales. For all Frankie knows, his father is a crewman on a cargo ship sailing around the world. But Lizzie?s cover is blown when the ship Frankie?s father is supposedly on pulls into the local harbor. Frankie fully expects his dad to attend his soccer game while in port, and so his mother (played by Emily Mortimer) hires a stand-in, a brooding stranger (played by Gerard Butler) whose one-day stay stretches into a full weekend. Things get very interesting when the real father shows up. The story, set in and around Glasgow, Scotland, is touching but not schmaltzy; it?s more akin to British kitchen-sink realism or the films of Ken Loach. Notably, director Auerbach, a former still photographer, does her own cinematography here, lending an elegant sweep to the proceedings.