‘Strictly Confidential’ Review: Makeout Scenes and Flimsy Melodrama on a Caribbean Isle
“Some secrets are meant to stay buried” says the ad line for “Strictly Confidential.” But you’d need a sizable underground bunker to contain all the effortfully shocking revelations sprung in this very silly sudser, which starts out looking like an erotic thriller-mystery, then descends into a series of flashback-laden explication monologues more apt for “Dynasty” than Agatha Christie.
Damian Hurley’s directorial feature, with famous mum Elizabeth top-billed and producing, provides several hardbodied younger performers opportunity to model clothes and approximate recognizable human emotions on the coastline of tax haven island nation Saint Kitts and Nevis. But what was likely an enjoyable working Caribbean vacation for cast and crew proves somewhat labored for viewers. Nonetheless, watched in the right spirit, with appropriate libations, it could prove quite entertaining … if not in the way presumably intended. Lionsgate is releasing to U.S. theaters, digital and on-demand platforms on April 5.
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A note of fashion/travel advertisement is struck immediately with images of bikinied thespians floating in clear blue waters, writhing in the arms of muscular shirtless men, and so forth — an opening montage not elevated when it turns out to be dreamt by someone bathing in the requisite luxury bathtub surrounded by (doubtless scented) candles.
That someone is Mia (Georgia Lock), who seems to wake from another such vaguely troubling reverie every 20 minutes or so here. She is the erstwhile best friend of Rebecca (Lauren McQueen), who presumably drowned herself last summer. But as the reasons for suicide were obscure, her body remains unfound, and her father had also died a rather murky death just weeks prior, the whole affair as yet lacks “closure.”
That emotional effect is exactly what’s being sought by mother Lily (Hurley) and surviving eldest daughter Jemma (Genevieve Gaunt) in their inviting Rebecca’s usual friends back for another holiday, the first since tragedy struck. Still traumatized, they’ve dropped contact with one another since, Mia even dumping boyfriend James (Freddie Thorp). So it’s a reunion for the aforementioned, as well as Rebecca’s own boyfriend Will (Max Parker), plus everyone’s friend Natasha (Pear Chiravara), who for some reason now works as an upscale stripper in a posh club. (This is the sort of movie in which almost no one seems to have a vocation or job, but we assume they are all trustafarians.)
Mia has a lot of questions about what happened last summer. No one else wants to talk about it — albeit not from painful grief, it turns out. Rather, it’s because they’ve all got guilty secrets to hide. They hide them pretty poorly, since gape-mouthed Mia keeps walking in on people caught making out with the “wrong” other party.
There are also flashbacks to other makeout scenes, though the initial steamy musk redolent of vintage “Skinemax” and Zalman King movies proves deceptive. Eventually the film grows less interested in softcore suggestiveness than murder-mystery-adjacent plot mechanizations as convoluted (and flashback-laden) as they are increasingly ridiculous.
Somewhere around the two-thirds mark, escalating levels of pure tosh begin to perversely work in the movie’s favor. What had been a mildly scenic if paper-thin diversion turns into the kind of joint whose narrative big reveals also trigger big laughs — with considerable help from hackneyed dialogue and some awkward acting moments. The histrionic burden falls heaviest on Lock, who cannot be said to emerge unscathed.
But in truth, as written and directed, these roles might flummox the most talented interpreters. Plausibility of action and psychology appears to have taken a distant back seat to concerns of how the performers look in the variably skimpy or low-cut costumes by Gabbi Edmunds. Likewise, George Burt’s widescreen cinematography eschews any suspenseful atmospherics in favor of a bright, bland showcasing of handsome getaway decor (Tom Downey is the production designer) and attractive beach views. Michael Richard Plowman’s original score further underlines that we’re basically watching a cheesy soap opera in B-movie form.
Purportedly shot in just 18 days, “Strictly Confidential” is most kindly viewed as on-the-job training for the junior Hurley, who under those circumstances acquits himself well. His film has sufficient professional polish and passable entertainment value, intentional or otherwise. But one assumes his scriptwriting did not suffer from the same time constriction, in which case that labor should definitely be left to others in future projects.
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