Saint Frances

Actor Kel­ly O’Sullivan takes on the lead role of Brid­get, a 34-year-old woman who doesn’t quite have it all fig­ured out just yet. At the out­set of the film, which O’Sullivan also wrote, Brid­get does two things which set the sto­ry in motion: she hooks up with a (very emo­tion­al­ly in tune) 26-year-old and goes to inter­view for the posi­tion of a nan­ny. The hook-up results in preg­nan­cy which results in ter­mi­na­tion, while the inter­view results in her being hired to watch over six-year-old Frances (played by pre­co­cious new­com­er Ramona Edith-Williams).

Increas­ing­ly in the world of lit­er­a­ture we’ve seen the ris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of young female authors explor­ing the com­plex­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary wom­an­hood through per­son­al essays or nov­els that feel more open and hon­est than maybe has been encour­aged pre­vi­ous­ly. In Saint Frances, O’Sullivan leans into per­son­al expe­ri­ences, pri­mar­i­ly abor­tion, lapsed Catholi­cism and the ques­tion of whether moth­er­hood is some­thing she wants at this time in her life.

Bridget’s intro­duc­tion caus­es a flash of ner­vous­ness that the ensu­ing 100 min­utes might be an indie reit­er­a­tion of Judd Apatow’s Train­wreck, but what fol­lows is much more nuanced and frank. While this sto­ry is cap­tured by a male direc­tor, Alex Thomp­son is also O’Sullivan’s work­ing and roman­tic part­ner, so his pres­ence feels unob­tru­sive. Unlike Apatow’s depic­tion of a ​“mess” of a woman who needs to be saved from her dad­dy issues (hel­lo, patri­archy!) by a fair­ly unex­tra­or­di­nary man, O’Sullivan’s rela­tion­ships feed into her nar­ra­tive with­out ever defin­ing it. She’s a woman who’s work­ing through her shit on her own, and that’s just fine.

Noth­ing in Saint Frances is a par­tic­u­lar­ly big deal. Yes, there’s dra­ma, but it’s all pre­sent­ed in a very mat­ter of fact way. For exam­ple, Frances’ par­ents are a gay female, inter­ra­cial cou­ple, but that’s not some­thing that Brid­get relays to her not- boyfriend when telling him about the inter­view. Like­wise, her deci­sion to have an abor­tion is cer­tain and unemo­tion­al, and the way in which it’s depict­ed is incred­i­bly hon­est, down to the maxi-pads and inspec­tions of the var­i­ous bleed­ings that follow.

This breezi­ness, though, should not be mis­read as being uncar­ing or glib. Yes, Saint Frances doesn’t dwell on mat­ters too heav­i­ly, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t deft in pro­vid­ing small vignettes on some much broad­er top­ics, like breast­feed­ing, post­na­tal depres­sion, the men­tal health strug­gles of a par­ent who isn’t the pri­ma­ry car­er, the impact a new sib­ling can have on a child and the fact that some women (par­tic­u­lar­ly those with Catholic guilt) still rely on pulling out as a method of contraception.

As with Desirée Akhavan’s Appro­pri­ate Behav­iour, Saint Frances allows women to be unjudged – it cel­e­brates who they are, warts and all. There’s humour, there are tears, there are poor deci­sions with creepy gui­tar teach­ers, but, in the end, there’s real­ly just 70 tril­lion cells that, if they were giv­en the choice, were hap­py to be born. Only in see­ing films like this and read­ing books by women who go through and ques­tion what we might do in such a sit­u­a­tion, do we begin to realise that we aren’t so alone in our own uncertainties.