Friday, April 25, 2008

Movie review: Deception

It's more of a naughty thriller than an erotic one, actually.

By John P. Meyer

Deception

"Are you free tonight?" A simple enough question, but how Jonathan McQuarry answers it will change his life forever. A corporate auditor adrift in a sea of New York's power elite, Jonathan's work is his entire life. But, a chance meeting with Wyatt Bose, a charismatic corporate lawyer, introduces Jonathan to a decadent playground for Manhattan's executive upper crust. For these power brokers, whose 18-hour workdays leave no time for a personal life, there's "The List"--a sex club, of sorts, where the right cell-phone number and four simple words ("Are you free tonight?") can lead to an evening's sexual fulfillment. It's a world of "intimacy without intricacy," as Jonathan's first conquest (or vice versa) explains to him, and through The List Jonathan discovers a side of himself that he didn't know existed. But an affair with a ravishing and mysterious stranger known to Jonathan only by her first initial 'S', will expose him to yet another world he never imagined--one of betrayal, treachery and murder.

Source: Cinema Source

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Slotting in closely behind midget westerns and just ahead of polemical rants, the erotic thriller genre has always been one of my favorites.

When you consider that the typical erotic thriller is probably going to contain significant amounts of both sex and violence (or at least action), then you can see why the form is likely to appeal to many movie-going adults. (Not to mention adolescents who have managed to either sneak into the theater, bypass their cable carrier's parental controls or simply download/stream a salacious screen gem from the vast poorly-hidden resources of the interwebs.)

But - and here's the rub - eroticism (and to a lesser degree, thrillerdom) is easier said than done. When you think of the great examples of this movie category, a few leap readily to mind while others lurk like shape-shifting sharks beneath the gulf stream of one's consciousness, waiting to be dredged up by the drift nets of memory. So when a film such as Deception labels itself an erotic thriller, I've got to see it to believe it.

Classic examples? I'm thinking flicks like Basic Instinct, Body Heat, Dressed to Kill (De Palma doing the most convincing sexing-up job of Angie Dickinson ever), and - more recently - Unfaithful (in which Diane Lane's character plumbs the depths of her middle-aged extra-marital sexuality to an unprecedented and Oscar-worthy extent) and A History of Violence (which includes the hottest copulation-on-a-stairwell scene in cinematic history, bar none). I'll even go so far as to posit Hitchcock's Vertigo as an eerily effective offbeat erotic thriller, exploring as it does the bizarre and blatantly unhealthy (not to mention pruriently sexual) way in which James Stewart's character tarts up his "new" girlfriend to look almost exactly like his "recently deceased" one. (We're talking Kim Novak here, playing both roles.)

Anyway, Deception stars some very drool-worthy actors who certainly have the potential to earn the label "erotic" for the film (depending upon what they get up to onscreen, of course), including Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams, Hugh Jackman and - in a range of bit (and naughty bit) parts, Maggie Q (looking absolutely delectable - while remaining tantalizingly untouchable - in black gossamer teddy), Natasha Henstridge (whose character understands the value of getting right down to business), Shannan Click, Daisy Bates, Paz de la Huerta and even Charlotte Rampling as an attractive and forthright older woman who still enjoys getting her groove on. (God bless her.)

"There's something about you that makes me want to break all the rules. Let's tip cows!"

On its surface, the plot sounds like something out of Eyes Wide Shut: events center around an exclusive sex club known only as The List whose members need only dial up another member's phone number, pose the question "are you free tonight?" and proceed to set up the details of the meet. Only, this sex club is more of an intimate affair, with the individual members meeting on their own rather than en masse in the ballroom of some vast estate. We're talking anonymous hotel hookups for straightforward screwing, kind of like an adult friend finder for well-heeled movers and shakers.

Straight arrow external auditor Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor, doing the mild mannered and mousy thang) is introduced into this heady netherworld quite by accident, when his cell phone is switched with that of an associate at the law firm he's auditing. This chap - Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman, ruggedly handsome as ever, though clean shaven for a change) - happens to befriend Jonathan late one night as they're both finishing up their workday. Wyatt - quite the extrovert - offers Jonathan a share of his joint, which they proceed to toke away on in the deserted board room. As we've always been warned, indulgence in the demon weed can lead to stronger stuff - though even the producers of Reefer Madness never envisioned this result.

As their acquaintance develops, Wyatt - the very definition of a player - introduces lonely, naive Jonathan to the big city's intoxicating club life, where women's urges appear out in the open along with those of the guys. (Surprise!) "There's a way that it can be taken care of," Wyatt enigmatically intones. "You make it sound like a mob hit," replies Jonathan.

Maggie Q in her brief cameo. In brief attire. Down, brief candle!

Anyway, Wyatt is called away on assignment to the firm's London office, leaving Jonathan to finish up his audit - and receive after-hours sexy-voiced invitations to naughtiness on the cell phone mistakenly left in his keeping. Loosened up by the weed (and fueled by the percolating high-octane hormonal juices generated by his recent club visits), Jonathan throws caution to the wind. Like a big kid in a warehouse-sized, flesh-flavored candy store, Jon-boy dives in head-first, using the phone's bank of saved numbers to set up one one-nighter after another.

But there's one woman on the cellular hit list who stops him in his gadabout tracks: a lovely tow-headed lass (Michelle Williams) who he knows only by the letter "S" - which letter he's noted on the strap of her designer purse. For some mysterious (and convenient, in plot terms) reason, Jonathan feels completely differently about "S," going so far as to break the rules of the club by engaging her in personal conversation as a preface to boinking. They even begin going out on dates, which - if the organizers of The List got wind of it - would certainly lead to his being drummed out of the corpus formosus corps.

Not unexpectedly (and inevitably, in the case of such formula pieces), things begin to go south for Jonathan in a big way, starting with the disappearance of "S" under bloody and apparently criminal circumstances. When Wyatt quits answering his phone, we get the idea that the jig may well and truly be up.

"I LOVE it when you glaze your shoulder blades with bacon grease."

From a thriller standpoint, if you think you've got the plot figured out, you're probably right. No twists come into play that aren't rendered thoroughly transparent by long-distance telegraphy. And from the standpoint of eroticism, I've got to say that the rapid-fire pastiche of bodies presented during Jonathan's early trysting does little to arouse anything beyond a curiosity over who's going to strip off how much, when. There's a scene near the end of the story (in the midst of its almost unbearably lengthy denouement) when "S" and (I'm not telling) get romantically reacquainted in a Madrid hotel room: he's passing his hands lingeringly over her (clothed) body, and she's warming up to his caresses. Now, THAT'S some pretty hot stuff.

However - one more shot of Ewan McGregor prancing around in his Fruit O' the Looms would have sent me out to the lobby in search of ju ju bees. (Which I don't even like.)

Plot holes? You could drive a car through 'em, particularly in regard to the choices made by the surviving characters in the final scenes. As an evening's (or afternoon's) exotic entertainment, you could do worse than Deception - but if you're looking for a satisfying erotic thriller, consider the classics - until something deeper comes along.

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