The Halle Berry movie that sat on the shelf five years: “I would lie if I said it didn’t feel frustrating”
Winning a history-making Academy Award opened up many doors in Hollywood for Halle Berry, but not enough that she was able to steer a passion project into cinemas, leaving her to wait half a decade for the fruits of her labour to be seen by a wide audience.
The star had been developing the project since the mid-1990s after becoming captivated by the true story that inspired its narrative, but even though it qualified for an awards season run and ended up with Berry securing a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actress – Drama’, it would be another four years before Frankie & Alice received a proper theatrical run.
Director Geoffrey Sax’s drama would sound ridiculous if it wasn’t ripped right from the headlines, with Berry playing a stripper in 1973 Los Angeles, who ends up being fired from her job after attacking a bartender and attending psychotherapy with Stellan Skarsgård’s Dr. Joseph Oswald.
During the sessions, it’s revealed that Frankie has three distinct personalities; there’s her everyday persona, that of a seven-year-old child with a genius-level IQ, and a southern aristocrat named Alice who harbours deep-seated racist tendencies. Needless to say, it required a delicately balanced performance, one that Berry performed with a suitable aplomb.
Production wrapped in 2008, and Frankie & Alice would be screened to the public for the first time at the 2010 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. In December of that year, it played for a week at a Los Angeles cinema so that it was eligible for awards season consideration, which did admittedly pay dividends when Berry secured her Golden Globe nod.
However, production company Access Motion Pictures and distributor Freestyle Releasing never gave it the big screen run everyone believed was coming, leaving the film to sit on the shelf gathering dust. Lionsgate subsidiary Codeback Films eventually stepped into the breach, and seven years after shooting wrapped Frankie & Alice was re-released to a much more significant extent in April 2014.
In an interview with The Guardian, Berry admitted there were frustrations on her part as both star and producer, but even if it hadn’t seen the light of day, the experience itself was rewarding enough. “I would lie if I said it didn’t feel frustrating,” she conceded. “But I released the sense of control and said, ‘You know what, it’ll find its way. And if nobody sees it, well, I did it.'”
She might have ended up in the running for a Golden Globe for her efforts, but as a whole, Frankie & Alice was thoroughly panned. Its long-awaited theatrical rollout didn’t come close to earning a million dollars in ticket sales, either, but Berry was able to take solace in the fact her long-gestating and multifaceted turn got there eventually.
