Movie Review: Frankie and Alice

Frankie & Alice * ½
Directed by: Geoffrey Sax
Written by: Cheryl Edwards and Marko King & Mary King & Jonathan Watters and Joe Shrapnel & Anna Waterhouse.
Starring: Halle Berry (Frankie), Stellan Skarsgård (Oz), Phylicia Rashad (Edna), Chandra Wilson (Maxine), Alex Diakun (Hal), Joanne Baron (Nurse Susan Shaw), Brian Markinson (Dr. Backman), Matt Frewer (Dr. Strassfield).

I’m not sure how many movies I have seen about someone with multiple personality disorder, but it is way too many. I’m a little tired of them, because they are all basically the same. The most famous one is most likely The Three Faces of Eve from 1957, a film for which Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for Best Actress. I’m not a huge fan of that film, but it is effective in the way that some films from 1957 are – yes, it’s a little square, a little old fashioned and dated, but it’s still pretty good. We forgive the movie its flaws in part because it came from another time and place where not as much was understood about the psychology of MPD. The problem with this new film, Frankie and Alice, is that it feels like a film made in 1957 – when in fact it was made in 2010. You would never know that 53 years had passed between the two movies, because both are about as simplistic.

I know why Halle Berry wanted to make this film – along with alcoholics and the mentally handicapped, people with MPD supply an actor with a chance to showcase their skills. And to give Berry credit, she throws herself wholeheartedly into the role of Frankie – a stripper in the 1970s, who has a little child, who is a genius, and a racist white woman, inside of her. Sometimes they take over and make her do things she wouldn’t ordinarily do. She gets checked into a mental hospital, where she meets the kindly Dr. Oz (Stellan Skarsgard), who like seemingly all movie shrinks (except for the ones that treat Lisabeth Salander) is patient, and kind and understanding, and helps to find the inner childhood trauma that led Frankie’s personality to split. You’ve seen this before and done better.

There are many problems with the film, not the least of which is the direction by Geoffrey Sax. If he proved anything with White Noise a few years ago, it was that he really doesn’t know what he is doing by the camera. He tries for many strange, artistic effects in the film, and all they do is serve to make the film borderline unwatchable at times. When he settles down and plays things straight, the movie may be a little bland and boring, but it’s not awful.

I must admit that I am tired of movies like Frankie and Alice, which take a well worn premise and decide not to try and do anything different with it. Why make the film if you aren’t really going to do anything with it that wasn’t done all the back in 1957 when they made The Three Faces of Eve? Because I don’t know the answer to that question, I really didn’t like Frankie and Alice at all.