Last week we got our first glimpses of the new Halle Berry film, Frankie & Alice, the story of woman struggling with a rare personality disorder where she struggles to keep her racist personality under control. Now we have our first trailer, and it is the signs that awards season is upon us.
The trailer is admirably pieced together and makes us feel the weighty, worthy subject matter. However the performance of Halle Berry looks completely ridiculous, over the top and awards courting. The lines such as “Get your filthy hands off me… Frankie isn’t here” is particularly skin crawling, and not in a good way. It looks frankly very unremarkable and nothing we haven’t seen before from mental health dramas such as Awakenings or even Good Will Hunting.
This and Rabbit Hole are the films which will be trying hard for Oscar gold this year based on their subject matter and over baked performances. I have no idea why they have the buzz they do, they just look like sentimental, overly emotional, perfunctory melodramas. Frankie & Alice is one I’ll probably be skipping.
Frankie & Alice will be in limited release on December 17th and wide release on February 4th, 2011