(Canada, 100 min.)
Dir. Geoffrey Sax, Writ. Cheryl Edwards, Marko King, Mary
King, Jonathan Watters, Jo Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse.
Starring: Halle Berry, Stellan
Skarsgard, Phylicia Rashad, Chandra Wilson.
What’s the deal with Frankie & Alice? This Canadian drama
carries a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for Halle Berry that it received when Frankie & Alice had a qualifying run in the awards race of
2010. Audiences may now see the merit in Berry’s nomination now that Frankie & Alice has a home video
release, but it’s weird to watch the film and wonder what exactly made it
linger on the shelf for four years when it obviously had a sliver of support.
Berry gives a searing performance in her turn as Frankie Murdoch, a woman who
suffers from multiple personality, so it’s an absolute shame that distributors
threw Frankie & Alice under the
bus.
Berry’s dedication to the film,
which she also produced, frequently elevates the mostly by-the-numbers direction
of the film, which glides through Frankie’s treatment far too quickly and
cleanly to suggest that Frankie &
Alice is anything other than a one-woman show. (Although Stellan Skarsgard
and Phylicia Rashad are quite effective as Frankie’s doctor and mother,
respectively.) Even if one takes Frankie
& Alice simply as an a solo act, though, the film feels doubly
compelling for the bizarre place it holds in contemporary film distribution.
Why the handlers of Frankie & Alice
don’t think a performance this strong and a film with such notable
representations of both race and mental illness don’t deserve the effort is a
mystery for audiences to correct.
Frankie & Alice is now available on
home video from eOne Films.