Illicit (2017)
(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?