The cherry popped experience is over, but I'm afraid there's still some collateral damage. Temptation on the outset tells the simple tale of a young woman named Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell, an arresting and natural performer), a bright, educated and attractive woman who aspires to be a marriage counselor. She met her one and only-- the handsome, if not entirely ambitious Brice (Lance Gross)-- as a child; they met adorably so, while in church in their Deep South middle of nowhere town. In young adulthood, Judith is floundering as an in-house therapist for a high end dating service owned by Janice (Vanessa Williams, displaying a random but audience awakening Pepe Le Pew accent) whilst dreaming of starting her own practice. As a curio or something or other, Judith is pestered by her lack of wardrobe style by workmate Kim Kardashian, whose job is that of office tart, I presume. Trouble saunters in the office one day when Harley (Robbie Jones), a social media billionaire dude enters the picture with intentions of investing in the company. However, it becomes obvious within mere flashes he's more interested in investing in Judith...
The temptation is, whether Judith will give up her stable (if boring) marriage and good old Christian values and succumb to Harley and all his passionate something or other he feels he would add to her life. Temptation is a clumsily melodramatic soap opera that would be derided as disposable trash if it weren't quite so offensive, ugly and judgmental. To whom you might ask? Well I suppose an argument could be made on behalf of everyone with a pulse, but we should start with Judith herself. She's begins a seemingly happily married woman, but unsettled by a job she isn't passionate about and a marriage that's becoming more than a little stale-- he's even forgotten her own birthday two years running now! She begins a relationship with this hotshot dude, whose clearly full of b.s., but also hot and good in bed. The problem is Temptation isn't in an way a meaningful or honest exploration of fidelity-- it's a condemnation of it, but furthermore a condemnation of a bright woman trying to find happiness, or even pursue options. Judith does a bad thing, but Perry tortures her for it, first by a string of over-the-top behavior, and then further ridicules her when the consequences outweigh the crime. An affair doesn't lead to drug abuse or necessitate an STD scare. I ask, was it because Judith was driven...was that her crime?
The feat de resistance comes through in a demeaning, sermonizing and outwardly offensive sequence in which Mr. Perry's nearly literally depicts Hell. Once Judith is deemed practically in need of an exorcism by her minister mother Sarah (Ella Joyce), she enters a hellion, nearly Sodom and Gomorrah-like party hosted by Harley. There might as well be literal hellfire, what with the lurid setting and the alcoholism...and the drug use...and the well dressed men conversing casually with other well dressed men...good grief! I may be a novice to Mr. Perry's oeuvre but I felt I wasn't welcomed from the start. The flat scenes, limp pacing and distracting establishing shots (shot oddly toward the end of the film) prove faulty filmmaking, the depressing, reductive and insulting sexual politics at play still need some explaining. D-
No comments:
Post a Comment