Darker Shades of Elise

This is one of those films where you don't know whether to laugh or cry. There might have been a neat, if unoriginal, film inside - unhappily married woman starts affair, is blackmailed and there's a plot twist at the end; but everything is so badly done that the end result is very poor indeed.

The script is clunky and unbelievable; the London work environment which the plot revolves around is portrayed very unrealistically; some of the acting is very poor. The sex scenes are mechanistic rather than erotic, and not nearly as revealing as the director imagines; there is hardly a drop of sweat. Then towards the end, when events turn violent, the violence is so badly filmed that it appears ridiculous. Throughout, the score makes things worse.

This film went straight to DVD/streaming - never a good sign. Best watched with a lot of drinks and crisps - if at all.

I love Becca Hirani and most of her work but this movie was little more than sexual abuse with a low budget. Very hard to watch start to finish despite her best acting attempt to save it.

Better than the reviews and better than 50 shades darker but what I must object to is the lack of full frontal nudity from the lead we saw her nipples fleetingly compared to a proper nude sex scene from a minor cast member why do the film if you are not willing to go all in,this applies to both the script and the actors.

Unappealing cast - not only how they look, but who their characters are, and what they do. Terrible camera work, neutering whatever was meant to be erotic, or at least titillating. Less nudity, story and production value than in any of the late-night soft-core flicks on Cinemax or Showtime. Or one of those pulp "photography" magazines that provided cheap thrills before Hef delivered Playboy unto us.

This almost makes the 50 shades movie look good ... almost and that as we all know doesn't count. But back to this, that has a familiar story of a woman having fantasies and a sex drive that her other half apparently can't please. You need two tango and two to cheat on someone.

The games she thinks she is playing - well maybe she should have read the rules. Then again not every affair goes down south like that so fast (no pun intended and the literal going south does take a minute or two as the director states in his commentary). Elise has quite some issues - being convincing and making us really care for her is one of those. And that in the face of what she has to go through ... which is horrible no doubt