Claire van der Boom | Through the Shattered Lens

It seemed like it should have been the perfect vacation.

Savannah (Claire van der Boom), her husband Brad (Todd Lasance), and their daughter Aria (Molly Wright) travel to an island resort off the coast of Australia. It’s the resort that Savannah used to vacation at when she was a child and this is a chance for her to not only get in touch with her past but to also show her family a good time.

And, at first, everything seems perfect. The island is beautiful. The people working at the resort are friendly. There’s a nice and attractive couple staying in the cabin next door. Even more importantly, there’s Kidz Club, where Savannah and Brad can drop off Aria so that they can have some alone time. Seriously, that may be the best thing about the resort because there are just times when the adults need some time to themselves. Aria and her stuffed bunny, Mr. Pickles, are dropped off. Unfortunately, when Savannah returns to Kidz Club to pick up her daughter, Aria is nowhere to be found.

Has Aria wandered off? Has she gotten lost on the beach? Has something worse happened? Soon, everyone on the island is searching for Aria. Mr. Pickles is found but where’s Aria? When someone sends Savannah a picture of Aria looking happy and drawing, Savannah realizes that her daughter didn’t just wander off. She’s been kidnapped! Kidnapped in paradise!

For all of their trademark melodrama, the best Lifetime films deal with very real fears. Discovering that your lover is cheating on you or that your in-laws so disapproves of you that they’re willing to go to any length to either prevent or destroy your marriage, these are very real fears for a lot of people. For a parent, there’s no greater fear than losing a child and/or not knowing where your child is. I mean, I may not be a parent but I am an aunt and I once lost track of my niece at the Dallas Arboretum and it was like the most terrifying 8 hours of my life. (Actually, it was only 15 minutes but it felt like 8 hours. Not only was I scared that I’d never see my niece again but I was also terrified of what her mother would do when she found out. Fortunately, it turned out that my niece had just run ahead of me to another exhibit but still, I was on the verge of having a heart attack by the time I saw her running up to me.)

Kidnapped in Paradise captures that fear of losing a child and the feeling of powerlessness that goes along with it. From the minute that Aria disappears, Savannah is searching for her and demanding that others search for her as well. Claire van der Broom did a good job of portraying Savannah’s desperation and her anger that the resort didn’t do a better job of keeping track of her daughter. What I liked is that whenever anyone else started tries to make excuses or started to talk about their own problems, Savannah was like, “Shut up and find my daughter.”

At the same time, as bad as I felt for Savannah, I was happy that her child was kidnapped in paradise as opposed to being kidnapped on a less photogenic island. Seriously, the resort looked really nice and I totally want to stay there, despite the area’s history of abductions. I mean, once you take the whole kidnapping thing out of the equation, it really was an nice place to work on your tan and take romantic walks on the beach.

My point is that the film delivered exactly what the title promised, which is perhaps the highest praise that you can give to most films. There was a kidnapping and there was paradise. The plot held my attention while the resort held my imagination. It was a good combination.

The combination of The Wrong Real Estate Agent and Kidnapped in Paradise gets Lifetime off to a good start for 2021.

The Lovers played in theaters earlier this year but don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it. I hadn’t heard of it until I came across it on Showtime. The Lovers — much like Veronika Decides To Die — is one of those films that spent a while sitting on the shelf until it was almost grudgingly granted an extremely limited theatrical run. With little publicity and no critical support, The Lovers came and went and now it’s been relegated to cable and Netflix.

And watching The Lovers last night, I could see why some studios might be hesitant about it. The Lovers is an amazingly messy film, one that seems to randomly careen from tone to tone. Sometimes, it’s a romance. Sometimes, it’s an adventure film. Sometimes, it’s an attack on colonialism disguised as a history lesson. And then, occasionally, it’s even a science fiction film. It’s perhaps the messiest mishmash of themes since Cloud Atlas and that’s saying something!

And yet, despite all that, I still liked The Lovers. In many ways, I enjoyed the film despite some of my better instincts. I’m still not sure what the Hell’s going on in 50% of the film and don’t even get me started on trying to explain how the film’s multiple story lines are supposed to be connected. There’s so much that I could criticize about this film and yet, when it was over, I was not at all unhappy about having taken the time to watch it.

The story … well, it’s a little bit hard to explain. The film begins with a God-like being forging twin rings. We then jump forward a few centuries, to the year 2020. Two marine archeologists, Jay (Josh Hartnett) and his wife, Laura (Tasmin Egerton), are exploring the sunken wreck of a colonial British ship. In the wreckage, they comes across the two rings. They mention that someone named “D.E.” drowned while clutching onto the rings. When Laura gets trapped under some debris, Jay rescues her but ends up brain dead as a result. In a generically futuristic hospital, Laura has to decide whether to use machines to keep Jay alive or to let him go.

However, we don’t see much of Laura and Jay in that hospital. This is because, after Jay goes into his coma, the film’s other storyline starts up. Suddenly, we’re in India. The year is 1778 and Josh Hartnett is playing a Scottish captain in the British East India Company. When we first see Hartnett, we naturally assume that he’s playing the mysterious “D.E.” but instead, we learn that this character is named James Stewart.

(It’s not much of a spoiler to let you know right now that we never learn exactly who D.E. was or why he or she drowned with the rings.)

At first, I assumed that Jay was dreaming about being James and that the India storyline was meant to run parallel to the 2020 storyline. That, however, quickly turned out to not be the case. My next guess was that James was meant to be Jay in a past life and I still think that’s a possibility. But the fact of the matter is that the film itself never makes clear how James and Jay are related or even why we’re seeing both of their stories. In general, I like films that are willing to be ambiguous but The Lovers took it a bit too far.

James is assigned to escort an Indian princess to the capital city. Along the way, James has to protect her from both rebels and assassins. He also falls in love with one of the queen’s warriors, the beautiful Tulaja Naik (Bipasha Basu).

It’s the scenes set in India that make The Lovers worth watching. Full of opulent palaces, gorgeous costumes, fierce battles, and sexy chemistry between Josh Hartnett and Bipasha Basu, these scenes are a visual feast. Even if they don’t always make much sense, they’re fun to watch. When The Lovers concentrates on India, it’s the epitome of an enjoyably over-the-top romantic melodrama. It’s only when the film leaves India for the near future or those Godly ring forgers that its inherent messiness becomes a problem.

In the end, The Lovers is not as bad as you might think. Just enjoy it as a visual treat and don’t worry about making sense of it all.