The movie opens with beautiful landscape shots of the Northwest countryside. Fenceposts jutting out from soddy earth, a freight train crossing fields of hay in the distance, billows of clouds, small structures by the side of the road, a motel or a diner in the middle of nowhere. Over this plays a languid but mysterious Twin Peaks piano arrangement and it's all adequately moody and atmospheric in an American Gothic sort of way. Through this however director Jon Jost keeps interleaving awkward frames, blocks of letters, opening credits with annoying swooshing sounds, color frames that announce "BLUE", numbers that count towards the "12 Steps to a Conclusion" announced in the opening credits. It's obvious by the first couple of minutes that, though Jost is more than capable to capture landscape and ambiance, he doesn't care for it. He has neither the affection for Pacific Northwest open expanses that Terrence Malick does in Badlands and neither the time or inclination of Twin Peaks David Lynch to weave mystery and intrigue around a given location.The rest of the movie is more Jon Jost frustration with experimental tricks that serve their own purpose. The use of split screen is interesting, I like in particular how we get the first image of Ricky Lee split in two, one is recounting childhood memories that matter only to him, the other is cursing and banging his head against the wall, and over the course of the movie the second Ricky Lee prevails, the macho laid-back hipster with the shades who is hopelessly self-involved and stupid. On the other hand the stop motion animation and choice to play most of the movie in voice-over narration does not work. It does at times because Jost writes as good as he shoots static shots of the smalltown American Nowheresville but Beth Ann's monologues, delivered in the most flat nasal monotone imaginable, a voice that sounds like Stephen Hawking's computer speech program crossed with a horse whinnying, are so grating to the ear it kind of defeats the purpose of trying to pay attention.Each of the couple relate to us their past experiences, their small triumphs and follies and doubts and past relationships that went nowhere. They say very little to each other and what they say they say with blank faces. But they hump like rabbits. That seems to be their only channel of communication left open, perhaps the only one they can trust with any safety. Jost clearly picks his main characters in Frameup among the naive and delusional, those baited by an American Dream turned sour, but he doesn't place himself above them. He's not condescending or smug in his portrayal. They may be misguided but they are graced with moments of humanity, awkward though they may be. We're called to empathize and show affection rather than point and laugh. This is the most successful Frameup becomes; the movie's characters come alive even when their expressionless faces do not, even when Jost gets in their way with his stilted framing and obtrusive camera games.Then we go back to angry rants about the destructive effects of money played over an inserted shot of a dollar bill, we get a weird psychedelic sequence where Jost's camera glides under big leafy trees that soon turn beetroot red as Beth Ann repeatedly muses about the "redwood trees" in the voice-over, we even get a sudden about-turn towards plot and genre as the couple of Beth Ann and Ricky Lee, smalltown losers with nowhere to go and nothing to hold them back to their dead end lives, arrive in California and decide to rob a 7/11. The movie doesn't soar to an emotional crescendo in the aftermath of the botched 7/11 job such as one might expect from a 'couple-on-the-run' road movie, it slowly screeches to a halt and you look out the window to see it hasn't really got anyplace in particular. Parts of the ride have been hypnotic and parts almost touching and funny, but everything else has been mostly annoying.

"So from the outset I want two really stupid assholes with whom no one would sympathize." - Jon Jost's reflections on Frameup, from http://www.jon-jost.com/work/frameup2.html If you can deal with Beth-Ann's voice or Ricky-Lee's deliberate obnoxious macho-outlaw/hipness, you're doing better than me. Or maybe you shouldn't be "dealing" with it. In Jost's parody of both romantic noir (think Niagara) and road-movie/outlaw (Bonnie and Clyde/Badlands) conventions, the couple-on-the run are just utter losers who spend most of their time droning on about their former and current dead-end lives, conquests and jail terms (Ricky-Lee) and romance-novel fantasies (Beth-Ann). Whether you can tolerate them at all, particularly Beth-Ann whose grating monotonal whine makes here one of the absolute most annoying characters in film history will depend on your interest in director/writer/cinematographer/editor Jost's bag of cinematic tricks which explode in profusion throughout the film, making this for me one of the most dazzling avant-garde features I can remember. Who else would dare to reference Vertigo and do so in a most unexpected and delightful manner towards the end of a film that carries the opposite of that films tenor of romanticism? From the very first the film announces its unconventional intentions: subtitled "12 Movements to the only Conclusion", each word of the title and subtitle and each credit is a quick screen-filling punctuation in a series of long, desolate people-free shots of various Pacific northwest vistas around northern Idaho and western Washington and Oregon, the territory our protagonists are escaping from. The film is throughout punctuated by these titles announcing each "movement" always in blocky screen-filling letters; you might think Jean-Luc Godard here and you might be right, and certainly the film can also be seen as reflecting on that director's own homages to the American troubled-youth-on-the-run genres.Most of the film is played out in voiceovers with either Ricky-Lee or Beth-Ann (or later, both at the same time) giving us their stories accompanied by landscape shots, animations of common objects (a diner table-top filling and unfilling with coffee cups, sugar, silverware, cigarettes etc; a high-school yearbook, earrings, makeup), or static shots of the couple, occasionally speaking directly but more often silent and staring. Beth-Ann keeps talking about the ocean and romance; Ricky-Lee only seems to care for regular sex and easy money. Of course things are going to end badly, and they do in one of the most powerful execution scenes imaginable. As stark and unblinking as the film has been, it hits with a wallop; nobody cared about these two, they didn't care about anybody or anything, now they can only die, and despite their unpleasantness and basic unlikability, it is still crushing.Nancy Carlin's Beth-Ann is as I've suggested one of the most whiny and annoying characters you'll find and I can't really think of anybody to compare her to; the performance is deadened and sheep-like though if you look for it you'll find occasional undercurrents of humanity particularly towards the end; Howard Swain's Ricky-Lee is no less obnoxious though the genesis for the character seems more obvious - take a little Tom Waits, throw in some Jim Jarmusch, perhaps a touch of Belmondo, but rob them all of any intellectual curiosity and you've got the makings of Ricky.Gorgeously shot - and as with All the Vermeers Jost uses the entire frame in a way that few filmmakers do; seeing this panned-and-scanned would be criminal - and with the wonderful Jon A. English providing another distinctive jazzy score, this is a beautiful film from an aesthetic perspective alone, but it's probably the thematic underpinnings that got the most play when it got the abortive release it had. Jost left the USA after this film and it's not hard to see why: as a metaphor for the pathetic nature of the American dream, as a clear-eyed and unpleasant critique of the possibilities for the young, disaffected and undereducated in the American nowhere to move ahead, as a satire or parody of the American road movie and as an inversion of ordinary Hollywood expectations of drama and sympathetic characters, this has no equals that come to mind. American Beauty eat your heart out, this is the stuff of which dreams are destroyed.I saw this when it was first released in 1993 but wasn't nearly as prepared for the conceptual and experimental nature of it all; it was interesting but that was about it. Now I get it, and after falling in love with Jost's "All the Vermeers in New York" last week, I'd have to say the director has catapulted to near the top of my mental list of filmmakers to follow. This is great stuff and there's nothing else out there like it

FU was made during America's golden age - as far as indie films are concerned - which was the first half of the 90s. The U.S. indie film "industry" is pretty much dead right now, this being partially due to festivals such as Robert Redford's Sundance, which seeks to only promote overtly political i.e. left-wing movies and their cowardly makers (cowardly because there is nothing easier than to go with the PC flow, taking the safe route instead of creating something fresh and unrelated to social or political issues). Redford and his cronies were never as interested in movies as a form of entertainment as much they see it as a propaganda tool, a way to influence the populace as much as they possibly can, so that everyone would vote Democrat, and then eventually for Communists. (Don't ever think Redford has given up his red dream! They never do. There is no cure for that affliction, better known as "utopiania dementius".) That is not to say that Jost's unique little film is apolitical; after all, this man spent 2 years in jail for refusing to fight the Vietnam war. FU is very much left-wing, but there are only 2-3 moments of overt political vomitus. The first one is Swain's long and childish ramble about the evils of money, the other one a patriotic, happy-go-lucky America song, played while preparations are being made to execute the movie's couple. This latter segment was annoying because it cheapened the brilliantly filmed shots that followed. The song was Jost's way of saying - in a none-too-subtle way: "Hey, everyone, America is decadent because we still allow the death penalty!". This lack of subtlety sticks out like an idiot in a science convention. I also found it absurd that both Carlin would be handed a death sentence; in reality this would have been highly unlikely. But I guess Jost has a bone to pick with America; he must be a very, very frustrated, bitter man...However, what follows from there is one of the 90s highlights. Carlin's narration about the process of dying and then the state of being dead is the best description - or an attempt at a description - of death I'd ever seen anywhere. The movie very appropriately ends with this sequence, which is beautifully shot, giving FU one of the best endings you'll ever see. Jost had set up Carlin from the very beginning as an amazingly empty-headed bimbo, her narration often being a cause for amusement, but he uses her to make some clever or at least interesting observations on occasion, as well, this being nowhere as true as during this "outro". Her final words give away Jost's atheistic beliefs, but there is an unusual note of optimism there, something that is hard to describe.Carlin is excellent as the almost zombified version of a clueless all-American woman. Her line-delivery is totally one-note, and yet she is almost never dull, even when she talks about the dumbest/irrelevant things. The tone of her voice certainly contributes to her comedic success. Swain is also quite good, but Carlin steals this movie. The redwoods scene, coupled with her infantile cries of joy and interesting music, is another highlight of the movie. If you're looking for a unique (female) character, Carlin's is as good a choice to observe as any. Very effective is a scene in which Swain drives, while Carlin sits next to him, reading a trashy romance novel. Her facial expressions are wonderful, especially her smug grin after she finishes servicing Swain orally.FU is very slow, static, with very long shots, and experimental. If you're a great fan of the Spiderman movies, you might wanna skip this one.Then again, I have no idea how anyone will find a copy of this movie - short of contacting Jost himself. I doubt this exists on DVD, and I very much doubt many channels would play it. There is a pornographic scene in the movie which was quite unnecessary.

I really enjoyed watching this film. The story deals with a couple on the road who try to grasp at the mythical American Dream. The film walks the line between being hilarious and moving, and I was left with an odd feeling at the end of the film. At first I found the acting strange, but I began to see what the actors were doing, and they were doing it very well. The performances are very engaging, and they are skillfully subtle. The film has a cast of 3 speaking roles and you can tell by the techniques employed that this is a true independent film. Like other indies such as Tarkovski and Jarmusch, Jost (who does just about everything behind the camera), is a fan of the long take. Several of the shots in this film are static and you're forced to stare at an image for a long time compared to most Hollywood films. This is not to say that the film is boring, because it's exactly the opposite. The dead-pan dialogue is delivered in such a way that you're caught of guard by some of the creative lines in the film. "What? What did he just say? Atomic what?" As well as using long static shots, Jost also uses stop motion animation in conjunction with live action, and split screens abound in the film. Even if you don't love this film, at least you'll come away from it having seen something new. This film is inspiring to anyone who is tired of the usual slop that Hollywood tries to force upon us every year. It's ironic that the films that are the most creative are often the most hard to find. If you can get your hands on this film, by all means do so.