Family ties

WATCH: Paul Bettany plays gay in bittersweet trailer for Uncle Frank

Paul Bettany and Peter Macdissi in Uncle Frank
Paul Bettany and Peter Macdissi in Uncle Frank (Photo: Amazon Prime)

In terms of gay-related movies, Netflix’s The Boys In The Band and the upcoming Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci drama Supernova have prompted many headlines and anticipation. A trailer for another fall movie slipped out yesterday and we’re already gagging to see it.

Related: Stanley Tucci & Colin Firth give off hot dad vibes in ‘Supernova’

Uncle Frank is written and directed by Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood). The Amazon original will premiere on the streaming service for Thanksgiving.

Set in 1973, the movie follows teenager Beth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis, of It and Sharp Objects fame), who leaves her Baptist family in the rural south to go to New York to study. There she turns up on the doorstep of her Uncle Frank (British actor Paul Bettany), a literary professor, to surprise him.

She’s greeted by his ‘roommate’, Walid ‘Wally’ Nadeem (Peter Macdissi). Beth quickly discovers that instead of roommates, the men are gay and have been together as a couple for the previous ten years.

When Frank finds out his father, Beth’s grandad, has passed, he has to travel back home for the funeral, with Beth and Wally in tow. Returning back to the south stirs up painful memories of his homophobic upbringing, and questions over what to reveal about his life in New York.

The movie explores the homophobia so common at the time, and the torturous impact it had on families. However, as the trailer shows, there also some laugh-out-loud moments along the way.

Related: WATCH: Can an outcast gay boy conquer high school…in drag?

Sophia Lillis and Paul Bettany in Uncle Frank
Sophia Lillis and Paul Bettany in Uncle Frank (Photo: Amazon Prime)

The movie also stars Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Lois Smith and Steve Zahn. It received its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and on the back of that, already has a decent 75% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. It comes to Amazon Prime on November 26.

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