The recently released movie Uncle Frank gutted me. It’s the story of Frank Bledsoe, the cool uncle to his teenage niece, Beth, who Frank encourages to find a world bigger than the repressed society where they grew up in rural South Carolina in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Closeted to his family and battling addiction, Frank is an NYU professor who lives with his boyfriend and a cosmopolitan set of friends, a world apart from the one in which he grew up.
A trip home for a funeral leads to intense family trauma, searing memories of a tragic young romance cut short, and ultimately, reconciliation, and redemption.