Frank

Sur­re­al­ist shenani­gans are what we’ve come to expect from Welsh gonzo jour­nal­ist and screen­writer Jon Ron­son (The Men Who Stare at Goats), but he sur­pass­es all expec­ta­tion with this charm­ing­ly off-kil­ter res­ur­rec­tion of cult TV and stand-up per­sona, Frank Side­bot­tom, who was brought to life by musi­cian and come­di­an Chris Sievey for over two decades.

Here Ron­son – who played keys in the Frank Side­bot­tom band for a short peri­od in the late ​’80s – along­side direc­tor Lenny Abra­ham­son, repur­pose this most­ly for­got­ten Brit odd­ball as the cat­a­lyst for mis­ad­ven­ture in a dark­ly com­ic tale of a strug­gling musician’s painful rite of passage.

Hum­ming a hap­py tune and tweet­ing a mer­ry Tweet is Jon (Domh­nall Glee­son), who’s long dreamed of mak­ing it big in the music indus­try but doesn’t real­ly have the tal­ent to get there. When Jon lucks his way into play­ing a local gig with tour­ing band The Soron­prf­bs – whose unpro­nounce­able name forms one of the film’s best run­ning jokes – it feels like des­tiny call­ing. For a short time, at least. Because despite his pal­pa­ble enthu­si­asm, we sense from the out­set that Jon is out of his depth.

It’s not (just) that he’s a ter­ri­ble musi­cian, more that Jon isn’t read­ing from the same song­sheet as the band’s mer­cu­r­ial and enig­mat­ic front­man, Frank (a lit­er­al­ly unrecog­nis­able Michael Fass­ben­der), who wears a giant papi­er mâché head which he refus­es to take off – he sleeps in it, wash­es in it, even eats liq­uid meals through a tube. In fact, none of the oth­er band mem­bers have seen Frank’s real face.

With judge­ment cloud­ed by his pur­suit of star­dom, Jon ignores the ini­tial bad vibes, and before long he’s pil­ing into a van and unload­ing gear into a remote Irish cot­tage-cum-record­ing stu­dio to lay down the band’s debut long-play­er. What he thinks is just going to be a week­end-long jam, how­ev­er, spi­rals (or rather stag­nates) into an 18-month slog dur­ing which the band wres­tle for Frank’s affec­tions. Dur­ing this time Jon bonds with Frank, who opens up with­out ever let­ting the mask slip, while Jon’s incli­na­tion towards watered-down yet ​“extreme­ly like­able” pop songs sours his rela­tion­ship with scowl­ing theremin play­er Clara (Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal), who’s nev­er less than forth­com­ing in her hatred.

Any­one who has ever toiled day-and-night in search of musi­cal per­fec­tion, only to reach a point of artis­tic indif­fer­ence, will relate to this delight­ful­ly screwy black com­e­dy. Yet Frank is also a clever satire on the cor­rup­tive pow­er of the inter­net, as Jon’s rit­u­al chron­i­cling of the band’s extend­ed record­ing ses­sion racks up YouTube hits for all the wrong rea­sons. Their inter­net infamy gets them noticed by the pro­gram­mers of none oth­er than SXSW, and so, some­what reluc­tant­ly, the band hot­foots it to Austin to per­form for their ador­ing fans.

When they arrive, the real­i­ty that going viral doesn’t equate to actu­al pop­u­lar­i­ty hits Frank hard. With the wheels threat­en­ing to come off, Abra­ham­son steers his film down a con­ven­tion­al avenue and the lin­ger­ing ques­tion over Frank’s true nature – is he a tor­tured genius, clos­et­ed freak or just a hip­ster with a big head? – is even­tu­al­ly answered, for bet­ter or worse, in a poignant clos­ing scene that jars with the film’s hith­er­to mad­cap tone.