A waiter and a well-dressed party guest lock eyes. In an alley, she casually tells him her room number. After the party wraps, the waiter, all dressed in black, makes his way upstairs. He doesn’t usually do this, he demurs, but soon the passion of the moment takes over almost as soon as the guest slips out of her flowing white dress. “I might need to see you again,” she purrs the next morning, giving him a moment of assurance. “Might,” he returns with a cocky smirk. Oh yes, “might” is a strong possibility.
In Justin Kelly’s erotic thriller “Pretty Thing,” a chance encounter leads to a sexy escapism before the illusion shatters pretty badly. The good times take the couple to a whirlwind tour of Paris for a second date. Still, by the next round, the guest, a high-powered marketing executive named Sophie (Alicia Silverstone), is losing interest in the desperate, awkward energy of her date, Elliot (Karl Glusman). Like many a spur-of-the-moment fling, things end quickly, but Elliot does not take rejection well, and he spirals right into the path that movies like “Fatal Attraction” set out for a jilted lover who won’t take no for an answer.
The result is a rather unappealing riff on erotic thrillers. Kelly and writer Jack Donnelly attempt to subvert genre conventions by inverting the traditional “Fatal Attraction” dynamic, where the man is the crazed stalker and the woman is the well-to-do target. But they introduce a very real, gendered sense of violence to their story. In the U.S., over one in three women will experience physical harm or stalking from a partner, with the majority (4 out of 5) of intimate partner violence victims identifying as women. Watching Sophie stalked, harassed over the phone and at her workplace, having her home broken into while she’s sleeping, and later, sexually humiliated by spreading printed copies of Sophie modeling in lingerie just hours before an important meeting, threatening her hard-won career is an uncomfortable exercise that does not feel entertaining in the slightest.
The filmmakers behind “Pretty Thing” seem to have misunderstood what made many of these erotic thrillers so memorable. Consider the command Sharon Stone’s character holds over the men investigating her in “Basic Instinct,” the femme fatale allure of Kathleen Turner’s role in the steamy “Body Heat,” or the women that that inspire a passion so intoxicating it incites a murder plot, as in movies like “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and even the film noir classic “Double Indemnity.” For starters, the eroticism in “Pretty Thing” feels pretty dull even if its intentions are explicit. Silverstone and Glusman fail to spark more than a tepid level of chemistry, so much so that it was easy to guess their characters’ fling was not long for the world. This couple goes through the motions of a torrid affair with none of the heat.
On a technical level, “Pretty Thing” doesn’t do much to impress either. Matthew Klammer’s grim cinematography paints an unappealing picture that does not set the mood. Kelly and Klammer film the sweaty sex scenes with an almost clinical approach at first, then move into the more familiar territory of a montage of heaving breaths. They bring nothing new or particularly exciting to the genre, just their concept of swapping genders, leaving Silverstone to give a chilling performance of a woman always looking over her shoulder and Glusman to channel “Taxi Driver” into his threatening, sad-sack character. In the background of almost every uneasy scene lies Tim Kvasnosky’s ominous score, telegraphing how the audience should be feeling at every given turn.
We could all use a little distraction these days, and there are worse ways to spend the time than in the company of an engrossing erotic thriller. Unfortunately, “Pretty Thing” isn’t one of them. Between stilted conversations, murky cinematography, and the story’s intimate partner violence, the film is distracting in an unpleasant way. The way Kelly and Donnelly set up Sophie’s fight back against her stalker feels just as empty as everything before it. She’s shown taking boxing classes and physically defending herself against her harasser. But as the propulsive music hints that she’s stood her ground and is thus the winner by the movie’s end, we hear Elliot say he’s still not over her, like a horror movie villain who just won’t stop chasing his final girl. An unsatisfying end to an uncomfortable experience.
