Frances Ferguson: The Substitution (2019)

I saw this movie come up on the Amazon streaming service, watched the trailer and was intrigued, it looked like the Lifetime movie from Hell. Kaley Wheless is Francis Ferugson a 25 year old substitute teacher in North Platte, Nebraska, she is an unhappy person in an unhappy marriage and has a four year old girl that she's almost neutral towards. Francis embarks on an ill advised affair with a student, gets caught, goes to jail, and the film follows the unwinding of her life. While this could all be the stuff of melodrama director Bob Byington comes at it form an odd angle. This is a bone draw, sardonic comedy.

Nick Offerman (one of a number of Byington regulars in this movie) is the films sometimes distracted narrator, whose narration occasional comes into competition with Francis's own sometimes voice over. At times Offerman's narrator will say things like how they weren't there for Francis's arrest but caught up with her later, or that they aren't set up to show us much of Francis's time in jail. He will also announce the last time in which we see a supporting character on screen, the boy, Francis's soon to be ex-husband, her mom, even her daughter.

The film doesn't feel rushed but still flows at a brisk pace, running only around 70 minutes. I quickly found the director Byington has made a number of these short dry comedies, often on at least slightly off putting subject matter, and typically clocking in at an hour 10 or hour 15 minute running time, which is an old TV movie running time that almost no one makes films in anymore. 

The movie reminded me of the early work of Alexander Payne. Payne grew into one of our most empathetic film makers, and while there was always that strain in his work his early films especially had  a rough bite to them as does 'Francis Ferguson'. Ferguson is set in Nebraska like many of Payne's films (Alexander was from there, Byington is from Texas), is built around an emotionally distant character ('Citizen Ruth') who is a teacher who has an affair ('Election') and is cast adrift after a major life change ('About Schmidt), it is hard for me to not see these homages as intentional. 

While certainly not one of the best films I've seen this year it is one of my personal favorites, and has tipped me off to a director I don't think I've ever heard of before. I haven't been so excited to peruse the work of a new creative film maker in some time. Not for everybody but for me ***