By Daniel Bickermann. 15-year-old Frankie has a problem: He's about to become a dad. His girlfriend is even younger than he is, the whole thing was an accident or simply some stupid mistake, and in Catholic Ireland that's reason enough for a lifelong sentence of shame. The pertly boy is now supposed to prepare for his future father role with a simulation doll, which he is pushing in a perambulator through his dismal neighbourhood. Here are all the locations of his life as he explains it to us, as well as the dramatis personae: All around him are dysfunctional families, his own being the worst of them all. And all around him are fathers who don't care of their offspring, and frustrated mothers, who are left alone with the children and quickly descend into poverty. Frankie seems to see through this downward spiral of poverty and neglect. No one seems to put any faith in him, his former friends despise him now, and his girlfriend's father treats him like a leper. But Frankie is willing to show them all. His child is going to be better off one day…

With a shaky hand-held camera, almost documentary-style, director of photography Ivan McCullough captures this small tragedy unfolding in front of the decrepit landscapes of a nameless city and under dramatically overcast skies. Some over-exposures and the relentless Irish provincial accent as well as the erratic editing by Anna Maria O'Flanagan stress this unglamorous milieu which the film approaches without any pretensions or illusions. It's a ghastly neighbourhood, a suburban human wasteland through which Frankie pushes his perambulator while telling his story.

If there was ever any hope of consolation in this place then it didn't last long. Half the film has come and gone before a short piece of music can be heard, when Frankie remembers the day his own father abandoned him – a trauma that clearly haunts the boy to this day. It is because of that trauma that he wants a better life for his child. What gives the film its bitter taste is the fact that Frankie has nothing but good intentions. Sure, his rebellion against authorities like his future father-in-law may seem like childish defiance, but there are moments when the viewer wants to believe that this boy, who has barely reached puberty, could indeed one day make a responsible father. But of course this illusion is shattered quickly: A child is a child is a child, and despite of all the tragic implications we cannot really hold Frankie responsible when he finally abandons the perambulator to go for a stroll around the block with his old mates. He is a child himself, and he doesn't know what he's doing.

To confront such a difficult topic head on and with only twelve minutes of cinematic time, that really takes guts. Not only did director Darren Thornton understand everything that could be understood about his topic and his characters, he brilliantly puts all of it into pictures and dialogue. Frankie is able to distinguish between good and bad, he has seen too many bad dads to not understand what he tries to avoid – and like a precocious narrator he takes us back into his own family's past. At one time he leans over the camera, explaining that he had read about it being important to always look into a child's eyes. The audience stares at Frankie, a child himself, and finds itself caught in a mirror. Then there is the image of the lonely boy, backlit by the rays of the sunset, as he stares at the baby doll in his perambulator, wondering if he's really ready for this – there is an abundance of such splendid cinematic moments that make FRANKIE into a sparkling jewel of a short film.

Darren Thornton's 12-minute-long film has had an extraordinary journey. It won the Prix UIP at the Berlin International Film Festival qualifying it for the European Film Award, where it outrivalled thirteen other highly decorated short films to take home the price for best European Short Film. FRANKIE indeed is a short film that cannot be missing from any collection.

Links

• FRANKIE (IRL 2007. Darren Thornton)
• Trapped on the Outside – An interview with Darren Thornton
• Green Screen – Daniel Bickermann about the Irish film market