Review: Strictly Confidential

Director:  Damian Hurley

Stars:  Georgia Lock, Elizabeth Hurley, Pear Chiravara

There are plenty of examples in the entertainment industry of nepotism really working out for all of us. Genuine talents like Zoe Kravitz, for example. Or entertaining ones, like Dakota Johnson. Still, the lingering pall of privilege exists, as well as the potential for it to be manipulated in negative ways. Preferential treatment, unfair advantages, or projects like Strictly Confidential. Make no mistake, this review only exists because of morbid curiosity for this profoundly cursed feature.

An earnest – if earnestly shoddy – directorial debut from Damian Hurley, this Lionsgate production has more of the feel of a blandly tawdry Hallmark presentation, including a deliciously overegged sense of melodrama in many of the strained performances. But Hurley’s lead actor – sexually objectified throughout and the star of a notable lesbian sex scene – is his own mother, Elizabeth Hurley.

Yeah.

Ick.

A luxurious upper-class resort… somewhere (the movie is actually a rare Saint Kitts and Nevis production!). Haunted by the supposed suicide of her daughter Rebecca (Lauren McQueen) the year before, plus the seemingly accidental death of her husband around the same time (about which nobody is a bit phased), Lily (Hurley) invites a gaggle of her deceased daughter’s friends for their traditional summer getaway, reassuring her still-living daughter Jemma (Genevieve Gaunt) that it’ll be the last time she’ll have to see any of them again.

Swiftly it falls on friend-of-the-family Mia Faber (Georgia Lock) to play Nancy Drew and sniff out the clues of what really happened the year before. Her enquiries lead her to the office of Catherine Isaac (Agi Nanjosi), a questionably competent psychotherapist whom Mia has never met before… but who holds a mysterious file on her. Before you can say Shitter Island*, Mia is twirling about the island in hysterics hurling accusations, while Lily rekindles a lustful romance with exotic dancer Natasha (Pear Chiravara).

The vibes are bad with this one. The raunchy scenes with Mumma Hurley skirt full-blown gratuity, but they still feel icky. Horrifically tainted. It doesn’t help that the first ends with Liz looking more-or-less directly down the lens and the second widens from a close-up of her cleavage. She literally appears on screen tits-first. Without knowledge of the too-close family connection behind the camera these scenes would simply feel lumpenly executed. With it, Strictly Confidential suggests some deeply troubling psychopathologies being exposed before its audience. And, for Liz, an horrifically sad level of desperation.

DP George Burt seems to know what he’s doing. The movie is flatly lit, even once coming close to stylish, complimenting its (precious few) noirish elements. Hurley’s direction of the cast, meanwhile, seems to favour a kind of comically intense sincerity that makes a majority of them – mother included – seem inexperienced and self-conscious in their roles. It’s this very specific tone of awkward self-awareness that renders much of Strictly Confidential naffly overwrought. It skirts close to comic incompetence. Not close enough, sadly. It drifts beneath the threshold of ironic enjoyment, surfing a low wave of banality instead. Ironically, here, the dead often get the best scenes.

Mid-tempo, trivial and by turns scored with moody piano, synth pads or temp-track reggae that might date back to an old Casio demo, Strictly Confidential takes its inherent trashiness way too seriously, while Taylor’s producer/star mother is, ironically, wasted. As glossy, inconsequential and unbelievable as your average reality television episode, this is simple fodder. Rarely has the word “content” felt so dismally apt.

“Very sweet,” one character notes sarcastically at the beginning of the film’s extraordinarily protracted finale, “Wholesome.”**

Yeah, no. File beside other disastrously compromised dross like Guy Ritchie and Madonna’s equally ill-fated Swept Away.

*Calm down; the reveal’s not that interesting.

**This scene is the movie’s most enjoyable; almost worth overlooking the rest.