Frances (1982)

1982 was a very significant year in the career of Jessica Lange, she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Tootsie, and was nominated in the best actress category for this film. Frances is the true story of Frances Farmer, a Seattle born actress of left wing convictions who stared on Broadway and in Hollywood films of the golden era. She was... high strung, and maybe a little crazy. She was committed to a mental institution, more then once, and probably kept there longer then she should have been because her mother and guardian saw some personal benefit from keeping her there. Frances had some really rough experiences, though not all of those depicted in the film are fully verified. This is very much a movie made in the 80's and set in the 30's and 40's, the production values could have been a little higher, and the bio-pic's structure is maybe a little a bland. But Lange's performance is strong, and Frances life is really an interesting one. There is also some retrospective irony in Ms. Lange being here tortured in a mental institution, as decades later she was torturing others in a mental institution in the series American Horror Story. Sam Shepard, who became Lange's lover and eventual long term partner around this time plays her principal love interest in the movie, Harry York. ***1/2