Jean-François Rivard | Through the Shattered Lens

I recorded Dangerous Seduction off of the Lifetime Movie Network on May 5th! It’s also known as The Queen of Sin.

So, here’s the thing:

Posy Pinkerton (Christa B. Allen) seems like she should have the perfect life. She’s in her 20s and she’s already engaged to a doctor! Add to that, she’s a talented artist who has an up-and-coming career as a medical illustrator! Seriously, she can make a heart so realistic that you half-expect it start pumping blood through a body!

However, things aren’t always as perfect as they seem. For one thing, Posy is terribly shy and repressed. She rarely goes out or has any fun. Her fiance is the type who turns down a night of wild sex so that he can go to the hospital and check on a patient. I mean, seriously — what type of doctor does that!? (Other than a doctor who doesn’t want to get sued for malpractice, of course…) Posy’s even too shy to really pursue her career. Her best friend and cousin, Laura (Amber Goldfarb), says that Posy needs to have at least one wild fling before she gets married but Posy…

Well, Posy actually kind of agrees, even if she won’t admit it.

Things get complicated after Posy and Laura are the two last people to see a woman who is murdered shortly after she jogs past them. For Laura, it means meeting the handsome and single Detective Dagliesh (Sergio Di Zio). Who cares if the murder gets solved as long as Dagliesh and Laura get together!? They’re a cute couple! As for Posy … well, Posy is now being followed but she doesn’t realize it.

When Posy meets Jack (Richard de Klerk), she is immediately charmed. Remember that one wild fling that Laura recommended? Jack appears to be that fling. Soon, Posy is giving into an alter ego that she created for herself, the so-called Queen of Sin.

What Posy doesn’t know is that Jack works for someone who knows a little bit about sin himself. Charlie (Marc Thibaudeau) is a millionaire who deals with his ennui by hiring Jack and Stella (Inga Cadranel) to capture sex slaves, all of whom are eventually murdered by Charlie once he tires of them….

So, needless to say, there’s a lot going on in Dangerous Seduction but, in the end, it all becomes a fairly standard Lifetime kidnapping film. That’s not a complaint, of course. Lifetime generally makes the best abduction films and Dangerous Seduction deserves some credit for trying to do something a little bit different from the genre. The film starts off as almost a Fifty Shades of Grey type of film, with Posy exploring her sexual fantasies with Jack and then it becomes a murder mystery before ultimately ending up as a “let’s-escape-from-a-mad-man’s-mansion” film.

It’s nicely done. Whether capturing the shadows of Charlie’s mansion or the stark loneliness of a fresh crime scene, the films always looks great. (The film’s cinematography is credited to Sergio Di Rosa.) The actors all do a good job. Though Posy, with her constant self-doubt, can be a bit difficult to take, Amber Goldfarb is likable and fun as Laura and the between-the-lines romance between her and Dagliesh is fun to watch.

Lifetime always reruns their films a few hundred times so keep an eye out for this one!

Around 2 a.m. this morning, I watched the latest Lifetime Movie Network premiere, FANatic!

Why Was I Watching It?

Okay, so technically, I didn’t watch this last night. It premiered last night and I recorded it because I was watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead. However, I don’t think What Lisa Recorded Last Night has quite the same ring to it.

As for why I watched it at 2 in the morning — well, I fell asleep last night around 11:00. And then I woke up at one. Seeing as how I had already gotten my usual two hours of sleep, I decided that I might as well watch a movie!

What Was It About?

Nikki Myers (Katy Breier) has finally landed her dream job. She’s working as an assistant to Tess Daniels (Betsy Brandt), a highly acclaimed actress who happens to be the star of Nikki’s favorite show! It’s an enjoyably silly sci-fi show, one on which Tess co-stars with her husband, Hunter Clay (Benjamin Arthur). When the show started, Tess and Hunter were equals and Tess considered her role to be empowering. But, over the past few seasons, things have changed. Tess now finds her role to be demeaning and limiting. While Hunter gets to play the hero, Tess’s role becomes more and more about providing fan service for the show’s male viewers. Tess wants to leave the show…

But if Tess leaves the show, where does that leave Nikki!? Nikki’s spent the last few weeks bragging to her two friends about her job! If the show ends, how will Nikki be able to continue to steal props from the set? And how will she be able to continue to lie to her friends about the imaginary affair she’s having with Hunter!?

Seriously, when you look at things from her point of view, can you blame Nikki for becoming a little bit homicidal?

What Worked?

Yay! If nothing else, FANatic showed that the Lifetime-Degrassi conduit still exists! Perhaps because so many Lifetime films are produced in Canada, it’s not unusual to see former Degrassi actors pop up in supporting (and, sometimes, lead) roles. On Degrassi, Jake Epstein played the lovable, bipolar, drug addicted musician/photographer Craig Manning. In FANatic, he plays a slightly less likable character, a misogynistic television producer. Still, it’s always good to see Jake.

Anyway, FANatic was a lot of fun to watch, mostly because of the loving detail that was put into creating Tess and Hunter’s irresistibly silly sci-fi show. What’s interesting is that, if that show actually was on the air, it probably would be, at the very least, a cult hit. I knew more than a few people who would probably watch every episode.

Katy Breier did a good job playing the fanatic of the title. A film like FANatic is only as good as its villain and Breier brought a lot of life to the role.

What Did Not Work?

Seriously, why are redheads always crazy in Lifetime movies? Of course, that’s really not something that didn’t work. That’s just something that I, as a member of the 2% of the world’s population who has red hair, always notice.

But back to the question — hey, it all worked!

“Oh my God!” Just like me moments!

It’s hard for me to imagine myself ever becoming obsessed with any show to the extent that Nikki does. Then again, if that show starred James Franco…

Lessons Learned

You can’t spell “fanatic” without “fan!”