20/06/2023 - Birgit Möller delves into a young woman's restless, chaotic and ever-changing mind to describe her many crazy moods, impulses and personalities

It is miraculous and quite plausible to go to a packed cinema and see that during the screening there is a dead silence and a sustained interest. This happened last week at a morning session of the German Film Fest Madrid watching Franky Five Star [+see also:
interview: Birgit Möller
film profile], a film directed by Birgit Möller (who made her feature debut in 2006 with Valerie) and starring Lena Urzendowsky. The young actress then had a fun and interesting discussion with the audience, with some asking for her Instagram or accusing her slightly convoluted plot of causing some confusion.

Because the film, with a script written by the director together with Knut Mierswe, takes place in two parallel universes. On the one hand, the life of Franky, a withdrawn, shy teenager with a tense relationship with her mother, who is transitioning from girl to woman with all that this entails of volatility, the unknown and confusion, especially when it comes to love. On the other hand, the German filmmaker shows a hotel with a Jean Pierre Jeunet aesthetic that is the brain of this young woman, which is accessed by a lift. The characters here take turns with the protagonist and replace her in complicated situations.

So, when the environmentalist bellboy comes down the lift, Frankie becomes a girl with sharp ideas and forceful speech; when Lenny comes down, she acts like the little girl she still is; and when she is relieved in the middle of a party by the brash floor waitress, her sexuality begins to take off.

Reminiscent of films by Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, and their screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, the film boasts a simple, witty and amusing interplay of two narrative planes. It is nothing more than the resource used by the Saxon artist to talk in a light and humorous way about the many personalities we can hold inside. Does a teenager act the same in front of their family as they do in front of the person they like? And isn't youth just constantly experiencing different behaviours and attitudes?

That’s why the young Lena Urzendowsky (although suitably experienced thanks to her work in films such as Sweet Disaster and Cocoon [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) made it clear to her enthusiastic audience, "we’re complex people that should not be labelled, because everyone is different.” In this case Franky is a hotel with four very different (and pretty wild) humans inside and a playful hen, symbolising the animal and transitory nature of a first crush, happily hopping between one narrative plane to another.

Franky Five Star is a production from the German  Acthung Panda! and Finnish Aamu Film Company. International sales are managed by the German company Patra Spanou Film.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)