Essence Atkins

  • Illicit (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) Please forgive me if I get some of Illicit’s details wrong – I’m writing this review only a few days after seeing the film, but already it’s blurring into an indistinct morass of very, very similar black-cast infidelity dramas also broadcast on BET. Let me check the plot summary for details – oh yes: a parole officer and a model-turned-housewife are a few years into their marriage, so both decide on their own to start an affair. The hallmarks of a BET infidelity drama are all there, except for the slightly different ending: attractive cast (which is more than half my justification for watching — Michele Weaver looks fantastic in curls and glasses), lingerie scenes, appearances by patron saints of straight-to-BET movies Vivica A. Fox and Essence Atkins, and plotting so wonky that I’m not sure the filmmakers were working with adult supervision. Aside from attractive actresses, what keeps me coming back to BET films is the delicious sense that their movies are not slick or particularly competent: their storytelling mistakes are so confoundingly inept that they feel like fresh air in a world of overengineered filmmaking. In Illicit’s case, for instance, it means setting up the two adulterous relationships, then slowly cranking up the pressure on both partners until they’re blackmailed, revealing the connections between the various characters, getting all of them in the same place and threatening to blow all the secrets wide open… then walking away from the whole potential climax. Both husbands and wife end their affairs. No serious consequences. Never mind the blackmail that seemed so urgent ten minutes earlier. Roll credits. Who ever thought this was a good finale, ready to air? Even the most twisted “subvert all expectations” fan would find this unacceptable. In the end, films like Illicit have this bizarre blend of crowd-pleasing titillation (yet with nothing more explicit than lingerie), conservative morality (affairs are bad!), stupid characters (you would think parole officers would know not to mess with parolees), straight-ahead basic filmmaking (don’t go looking for directorial style from writer-director Corey Grant!), low-budget expediency and yet an embarrassing amount of rookie mistakes that stop the entire thing from being enjoyable as more than a catalogue of things not to do. I still liked Illicit, maybe in part because of its faults, but would it be too much to ask for a conventionally good film of that ilk once in a while?

  • Open (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) There are days where only a trashy BET-broadcast romantic drama will do. Open is nearly guaranteed to satisfy you if you’re used to the quirks and limitations of the subgenre: low-budget filmmaking that is rife with iffy acting, dubious scripting, cheap directing and explicitly saucy content. This specific film plays with the idea of open marriages, unsurprisingly concluding that they’re not workable in the long term. I wouldn’t expect anything less for BET’s audience, just as I wasn’t expecting them to skip over the near-mandatory lingerie scene. (And indeed, it comes within moments of the film’s opening.)  This amusing back-and-forth between suggestive content and traditional morality is one of the things that keeps Open alive throughout its melodramatic pace, as one of the husband’s past infidelities comes back with receipts, the wife is tempted by a past fling, and both of them start breaking the rules they established for themselves (which is what usually happens in mainstream films about open marriages). The conclusion, perhaps inevitably, is an all-around disappointment – trying to promote the idea of marital fidelity after wallowing in the opposite ratings-seeking behaviour and taking its characters way past the point of no return. But I don’t really mind: that’s the fun of those films. Essence Atkins stars as the wife, but it’s supporting players like the beautiful Marquita Goings and Jasmine Guy who become the reason to watch the film even as the contrivances and hypocrisies pile up. I’d love to sit down with novelist turned writer-director-producer Cas Sigers-Beedles to ask about the production constraints, the thematic intentions, whether there’s some ironic distance built in the script and how it is to put together such films on what must be a tiny budget and a breakneck pace. The result is frankly recognizable as substandard made-for-TV material – but Open is a lot of fun in the right frame of mind, and it is the kind of movie that got me to start systematically watching all of the BET original films I haven’t yet seen: they’re flawed in interesting ways, which almost feels like a breath of fresh air compared to slick Hollywood mega-productions that fail in very predictable ways.

  • A Haunted House (2013)

    A Haunted House (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) I remain a fan of the first Paranormal Activity, but I’ll be the first to admit that the film (and the found-footage genre) remains ripe for parody.  “A Wayans brother stars in a black-themed Paranormal Activity spoof” is the only thing you really need to know about A Haunted House: The Wayans have their own brand of comedy, and it’s almost exactly what we get here.  You know: Lame scene recreations, found-footage parody gags, a bit of slapstick, quite a bit of sexual humor (much of it wearingly homophobic), a surprising amount of shrill screaming from Marlon Wayans and a few tossed-away bits of relationship humor.  It sounds worse than it is, because for all of its cheap and tired humor, A Haunted House is easy to like.  There’s a solid core in the premise that our protagonist’s girlfriend moves in and both have to adapt to the new situation (to say that the film offers a thematic metaphor for the way relationships evolve once both partners live together is stretching the depth argument to its breaking point, though) and both Marlon Wayans and Essence Atkins are game for just about everything as the couple finding that their house is haunted by a demon.  Far from every gag works, but those who do are plentiful enough to raise grins and chuckles throughout a good portion of the film.  Characters at least try to have believable reactions (My favourite moment in the film is when the protagonist leaves and puts up the house for sale, only to come back dejected once he realizes that “you can’t sell a house in this market!”.  That and the bit where the lead couple does its best to act nonchalantly at the demon’s antics while the entire kitchen goes crazy around them.), the script eventually becomes a great deal less episodic than could have been expected after the first half, and frankly gets a bit more mileage than could have been expected from the thin premise.  The film has numerous issues (the laugh-free ending is weak, and the homophobia is only exceeded by the misogyny through which the female characters are defined), but anyone going into A Haunted House with low expectations and tolerance for good-natured juvenile humor is likely to get, if not a great time, at least a satisfactory number of chuckles.