Open (2020)
(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.