One of Roman Polanski's best, and too often overlooked. FRANTIC is a dreamy, tense thriller set against a stylishly reimagined Paris and featuring the performance of Harrison Ford's career. Dr. Richard Walker (Ford), a San Francisco surgeon, arrives in Paris with his wife (Betty Buckley),
intending to deliver a medical paper and hoping to revitalize their relationship (they'd honeymooned in Paris 20 years earlier). Walker speaks no French and cannot even make a phone call without his wife's help. The Walkers arrive at the posh Le Grand Hotel and begin to unpack, only to discover
they have the wrong suitcase. Later, while Dr. Walker showers, Sondra disappears without a trace. Initially baffled and annoyed, Walker soon becomes deeply concerned and finally frantic as he realizes that the police won't help him in this alien environment. Acting alone, he locates the owner of
the mysterious suitcase, Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), an alluring Parisian who draws him further into a web of intrigue.
Director Polanski, a master of movie atmospherics (e.g., CHINATOWN, ROSEMARY'S BABY), here creates a hauntingly foreign, forbiddingly stylish Paris that seems to move to the oneiric disco stylings of Grace Jones. Harrison Ford, outstanding as an American innocent abroad, moves persuasively from
complacency to confusion, rage, and paranoid desperation in a performance comparable to James Stewart's best work for Hitchcock. leave a comment
