Kacey Rohl | Through the Shattered Lens

In 2010’s The Client List, Jennifer Love Hewitt stars as Samantha Horton.

Samantha’s a former beauty queen whose mother (Cybill Shepherd) always hoped would go on to win Miss Texas and then maybe appear in movies and on television. Instead, Samantha got knocked up by her boyfriend, Rex (Teddy Sears). Rex was a football star at UT so marrying him didn’t seem like it would be a dead-in but then Rex blew out his knee. Now, they’re living in small town Texas, they’ve got three children, and they’ve got a bank threatening to foreclose on their home. When Samantha and Rex head down to the bank, their loan officer spends the entire time staring at Samantha’s chest while Samantha reveals that she has a photographic memory.

Desperately needing a job and with Rex drinking away his troubles, Samantha gets a job at a massage parlor the next town over. Naively, Samantha assumed that her job would actually just be to give men massages. Instead, it turns out that the massage parlor is actually a brothel where the workers continually tell each other that it “beats the heck out of waitressing.”

(They don’t say “heck” but I gave up cursing for Lent.)

At first, Samantha is disgusted by the idea of working as a prostitute. But, with Rex drinking too much and the house about to bet taken away, Samantha goes back to the parlor and soon becomes the most popular person working there. She works herself to exhaustion but one of her clients has just the solution for that. “I’ve never even smoked weed before,” Samantha says while looking at the baggie of cocaine. I’m sorry …. you dated someone who went to UT without ever smoking weed? I don’t buy that.

Samantha can now stay awake for hours, going to work and buying her family a lot of Christmas presents. Samantha’s clients include some of the most powerful men in the county. When one of her co-workers confesses to having doubts about the job, Samantha sends her to a church group so she’ll have someone to talk to. Soon, words gets out that the massage parlor is a house of prostitution and Samantha is getting arrested and led out of the parlor in her underwear while TV cameras roll. “That looks kind of like your wife,” someone says to Rex.

The Client List caused quite a stir when it aired on Lifetime back in 2010. (It also led to a TV series where Jennifer Love Hewitt starred as a different character.) It’s an enjoyably sordid story, one that embraces the melodrama and mixes morality and sex in a way that would have made Cecil B. DeMille proud. The film takes place in my homestate and, fortunately, it stars a lot of Texas-born actors so the accents are authentic, even if the dialogue was obviously written by a Yankee. (“She’s as busy as popcorn,” a character said at one point and I nearly went blind from rolling my eyes.) That the film actually carries some emotional weight is totally due to the lead performance of Jennifer Love Hewitt, who I’ve always liked because we’re both Texas girls and we’ve both got big boobs so I feel like we share the same struggle. Hewitt gives an authentic and heartfelt performance here, leaving no doubt that everything that Samantha does, she does for her family. The Client List is a true Lifetime classic.

After I finished watching The Bridge on The River Kwai, I decided to watch a more recent film that was on my DVR. I selected My Sweet Audrina, a film that made its debut, this January, on Lifetime. Would My Sweet Audrina prove to be as good a film as The Bridge on the River Kwai? Read on to find out…

I have to admit that, despite my well-known love for over-the-top Lifetime melodrama, I was not particularly enthusiastic about watching My Sweet Audrina. Though I missed the film when it was originally broadcast, I did see the commercials leading up to it. “From the author of Flowers In The Attic,” the commercials announced, which led me to believe that My Sweet Audrina would be yet another installment in the Flowers saga. And don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed Flowers In The Attic and I thought If There Be Thorns had some good moments but, after four movies about that messed up, incestuous family, I was ready to move on.

However, once I started watching the film, I quickly discovered that — despite some definite similarities — My Sweet Audrina has nothing to do with Flowers in the Attic. True, it does deal with family secrets and sexual repression and a young woman who is never allowed to leave her family’s Victorian mansion but other than that, it has absolutely nothing to do with Flowers In the Attic.

Audrina (India Eisley) believes that she is nine years old but she is actually a teenager. She spends almost all of her time isolated from the rest of the world. Her father (James Tupper) refuses to let Audrina interact with the outside world, convinced that she will suffer the same fate that happened to a mysterious figure known as “the first Audrina.” Audrina’s older sister, Vera (Toni Atkins), is jealous of the attention that their father devotes to Audrina. She deals with her anger by intentionally injuring herself and having sex with everyone she meets and then taunting the repressed Audrina with the details. When a handsome piano teacher shows up to give her lessons, Audrina is ashamed when she feels attracted to him and then is angered when Vera steals him away.

Fortunately for Audrina, a very understanding neighbor named Arden Lowe (William Moseley) has fallen for in love with her. (In what world does a handsome young man fall in love with a strange girl who has no friends, no understanding of the world, and is totally terrified of sex? The world of Lifetime, of course!) However, even after marrying Arden, Audrina is still haunted by disturbing nightmares and is incapable of enjoying sex.

Of course, it all comes down to the mystery of what happened to the first Audrina. And fear not! All questions are eventually answered. Of course, the answers don’t really make any sense but I guess that’s kind of the point. The melodrama of My Sweet Audrina is so pure and unapologetically over the top that it doesn’t have to follow any logic other than its own.

Visually, My Sweet Audrina follows the lushly gothic pattern previously established by Flowers In The Attic. The sets are elaborate, the clothes are to die for (even Audrina’s supposedly drab outfits have a definite flair to the,), and all of the performers are nice to look at. India Eisley does a good job as Audrina but, for me, Toni Atkins stole the entire film as the obsessively self-destructive Vera.

For lovers of over-the-top melodrama, My Sweet Audrina is a lot of fun.

And if you’re not a lover of over-the-top melodrama … well, then you probably wouldn’t be watching Lifetime in the first place!

(But, to answer the question I asked at the start of this review, My Sweet Audrina is not as good as The Bridge on The River Kwai. But it’s still pretty entertaining!)