Two men meet while walking their dogs, exchange a few words and find themselves with a reason to look forward to the next encounter.
It is an ordinary beginning with an extraordinary possibility: perhaps the romantic chapter they thought they understood still has a surprise waiting.
That is the invitation offered by Frank & Percy, starring Sir Ian McKellen and Roger Allam as older men whose friendship develops into love.
The film has its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 13, as confirmed on Allam’s official website.
A walk that changes things
McKellen plays Percy, an openly gay man in his eighties, while Allam plays Frank, a widower in his seventies who has always believed himself to be straight, according to Queerty’s trailer coverage.
Their paths cross on London’s Hampstead Heath, where dog walking provides an easy reason to start talking.
As the British Council’s synopsis explains, those casual conversations gradually become an unexpected romance.
Sometimes the dogs really do deserve a matchmaking credit.
More importantly, the premise gives two older men room to experience attraction, uncertainty and the possibility of a future together.
For gay viewers accustomed to seeing romance framed as a young person’s adventure, that alone offers something to look forward to.
From the stage to the screen
Both actors return to roles they previously performed in Ben Weatherill’s stage play.
The film is directed by Sean Mathias, with a screenplay credited to Martin Sherman in the BFI’s festival listing.
The ensemble includes Stephen Fry, Derek Jacobi, Ncuti Gatwa and Joanna Lumley, with Jessica Gunning also named on Allam’s website.
The romance belongs to the fictional characters, rather than the actors’ private lives.
Offscreen, Allam is married to actress Rebecca Saire, as his official biography confirms.
Still allowed another chapter
A later-life love story need not promise that everybody will find a partner, or suggest that being single is a problem waiting to be solved.
Its appeal can be simpler: age should not make someone’s desire, tenderness or capacity for surprise disappear from view.
We can carry grief, settled habits and a lifetime of assumptions while still discovering something new about ourselves.
That is what makes the prospect of Frank & Percy feel particularly welcome.
Two older men get to be the people falling in love, with all the awkwardness and hope that entails.
There is another kind of affection behind the film, too: McKellen and Allam’s longstanding friendship.
In McKellen’s own account of working with old friends, he looks back at their 2004 appearance in Aladdin and shares photographs from their latest collaboration—a lovely glimpse of the history behind this new beginning.
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