The one thing that cannot be debated is the intense ferocity of Jessica Lange’s performance and how this role instantly established her as a cinematic force.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 17, 2025

[Frances], though palpably overlong... is on the whole well-directed, decently set within its period, and makes the Jessica Lange of King Kong and the Postman Always Ring Twice look an actress of an entirely different class.

| Mar 24, 2023

Jessica Lange, blonde, nervy, witty, with great huge restless hands, captures, without self pity, the haunting quality of the eternal misfit.

| Feb 26, 2020

The facts are not presented with inspiration. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 29, 2019

Regardless of the cinematic flaws, the story of Frances Farmer is so powerful that the film still has a harrowing impact.

| Aug 20, 2019

There was material for a profound human tragedy in her life, but three writers were unable to uncover it. The result is an almost ludicrous parody of the Old Hollywood.

| Nov 12, 2018

All the more credit to Lange that she's able to extract something so titanically powerful from material so limiting.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 6, 2016

Jessica Lange brings so much energy and personal involvement to her portrayal of Frances Farmer that you can't help but feel sorry for her; nothing else in the film remotely matches her talent and dedication.

| Mar 9, 2015

Jessica Lange turns in a forceful performance, but director Graeme Clifford stresses the most sordid aspects of the story.

| Mar 9, 2015

Jessica Lange is mesmerising in this uneven biopic of the spirited, politically outspoken 1930s actress Frances Farmer.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 9, 2015

With a superb lead performance from Jessica Lange, this is a horror story based on life, not nightmare.

| Mar 9, 2015

This relentlessly depressing film biography boasts a moving performance by Jessica Lange.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 9, 2015

It's quite an accomplishment for Jessica Lange and it's too bad a better film didn't come of it.

| Mar 26, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 5, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 18, 2007

Farmer, as scripted here and played by Lange, unsurprisingly remains something of a cypher.

| Jan 26, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 27, 2005

Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley give superb performances as the troubled actress Frances Farmer and her domineering mother, compensating for the shapeless narrative, which is too ridden with cliches of showbiz biopics.

| Original Score: B | Jun 15, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 25, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2005