E-Mail This Article to a Friend Old World charm (continued)

DEAR FRANKIE

Shona Auerbach’s heartfelt melodrama may rely overmuch on manipulative artifice, but there are plenty of rewards at the end of this bittersweet rainbow. The title refers to the opening salutation of the letters that Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) pens to her deaf nine-year-old son (Jack McElhone). The catch is that the letters are supposed to be from his father, whom Frankie hasn’t seen since he was a bantling. The story Lizzie has cooked up is that dad is out at sea toiling on a freight ship, but the reality is that he’s an oddball with an unsavory disposition who pursues Lizzie from afar. One day, the ship that he’s supposed to be on sails into port, and Lizzie is pressed to find a surrogate (Gerard Butler). McElhone’s subtle, physical emoting and Auerbach’s loving depiction of a damp, glum Glasgow help lift the film above its treacly underpinnings, and Sharon Small, as the shopkeeper who brokers the father-for-hire deal, adds a shot of vigor. (105 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 3 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Tom Meek

DUANE INCARNATE

Just when I was about to resign myself to the hopeless, irritating tedium of this whimsical trifle from Hal Salwen, the topic of Schopenhauer came up in the otherwise trite dialogue and the film started to become meaningful. A quartet of female friends — Wanda (Crystal Bock), Fran (Kristen Johnson), Connie (Cynthia Watros), and the tirelessly insipid narrator, Gwen (Caroleen Feeny) — find their relationship altered when Wanda, the frumpy sad sack of the bunch, lands Duane (Peter Herman), the consummate boyfriend of the title. He’s good-looking, successful, considerate, and sexy, gives head but doesn’t need to take it, and smells like musk and the Caribbean. All of a sudden, the other girls’ beaus look like the losers they are. How did pitiful Wanda manage it? As all followers of the above-mentioned pessimistic German philosopher know, the world is an illusory manifestation of the will. Could Wanda have just dreamed Duane up? "She’s very imaginative," the girls concede. At times, Salwen can be imaginative too, and his cast has moments that are endearing and genuinely funny, but he proves weak-willed when it comes to sustaining inventiveness, wit, or originality through an entire movie. (83 minutes) Screens tonight at 9 p.m. and tomorrow at 3:45 and 5:45 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

GREEN BUTCHERS

For about the first third, Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen’s black comedy seems like a melancholy, ruefully funny shaggy-dog story — not unlike Lone Scherfig’s recent Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself, which Jensen scripted. Then, in a moment of panic, Butchers changes its recipe and becomes the Danish-pastry version of Delicatessen. Two assistant butchers, Bjarne (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Svend (Mads Mikkelsen), leave their abusive and obnoxious boss, "Sausage" Holger (asked the secret of his signature product, he says, "Imagine being stuffed up your own asshole . . . "), and start their own establishment. Business is slow until by "accident" Svend dishes out his special "chickie-wickies," which prove an astounding success. Is it the meat or the marinade? Jensen doesn’t balk at the more obvious macabre humor, but he also indulges in details and characterizations — the relationship between the Norman Bates–like Bjarne and Tina (Bodil Jørgensen), a cemetery worker, evokes Wilbur’s skewed romances — that are weird but delightfully apt. Not for every taste, but a hearty dish for the daring. In Danish with English subtitles. (100 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 3:15 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

KONTROLL

Eastern Europe has faltered in the world film market with its propensity for slow, dour, pessimistic art films. Nimród Antal’s Kontroll, a colorful existential action picture from Hungary, has US distribution, and it could be the post–Cold War movie that finds a youthful American audience. The premise is appealing: a raggedy, anti-authoritarian squad of metro inspectors patrol the Dante-esque Budapest subway system searching for lawbreakers, including a fast-moving punk who taunts them by refusing ever to buy a ticket and an eerie serial killer who keeps pushing people under subway cars. The squad is led by Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), a handsome, charismatic anti-hero who has abandoned a promising university career for perpetual days and nights as an Underground Man. Will he ever again see the light above the tunnels? Sharp all the way through, Kontroll culminates in a creepy "Masque of the Red Death"–like dance party where the robed murderer makes his last stand. Come on, Bulcsú! In Hungarian with English subtitles. (105 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Gerald Peary

***A Phoenix Pick***

ZELARY

As a member of the Czech Resistance during World War II, Eliska (Ana Geislerová) enjoys the perilous thrill her work gives her. But when the danger becomes real, she must leave her life behind and move to an isolated village. To maintain her cover, she marries the sweet, simple Joza (György Cserhalmi); they develop a tender, symbiotic relationship as she learns to appreciate her new life, and director Ondrej Trojan makes it easy to see why she warms to her new surroundings. From her tiny hut, which has an outhouse and no electricity, Eliska has a breathtaking view of the Czech countryside, and the film shows its calming effect on her. Life in the village, which for all of its picturesque charm can be casually cruel, has a rhythmic order that suggests the villagers have an understanding of nature that guides their lives. Eventually, of course, the war catches up with them, in a way that seems both inevitable and shocking. But it’s Zelary’s lyrical, elemental beauty that draws you, like Eliska, in. In Czech with English subtitles. (148 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 3 p.m. at the Boston Common.

— Brooke Holgerson

SUNDAY 19

***A Phoenix Pick***

LES CHORISTES

Christophe Barratier’s tender coming-of-age tale offers a few twists on the tough-love formula of such classics as To Sir, with Love and Stand and Deliver. Here the instructor thrown into the task, Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), uses his love of music to reach out to the disenfranchised at a post-WW2 boys’ reform school tucked away in the French countryside. He’s the offset to the megalomaniac headmaster (François Berléand), who has delusions of grandeur and favors draconian disciplinary tactics yet allows Mathieu to "experiment" by forming a choir (thus the title). The predictable pitfalls are followed by emotional healing, yet Les choristes works, much of its success hanging on the poised performance by Jugnot, whose failed musician is also in need of redemption. In one telling moment, after a mercurial youth has rendered a bulbous caricature of Mathieu’s bald head on the board, Mathieu one-ups his assailant with a stroke of chalk, gaining credibility with the boys and the audience as well. In French with English subtitles. (97 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. at the Boston Common.

— Tom Meek

MONDOVINO

Offbeat and always intriguing indie Jonathan Nossiter (Sunday, Signs & Wonders) couples his vocations as a filmmaker and an œnophile in this documentary about the blight that globalization has brought to regional wine industries. (135 minutes) Screens today at 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. at the Boston Common.

— Peter Keough