By Simon Thompson
Director Lauren Greenhall and writing duo Amanda Jane Stern and Julian Seltzer’s Perfectly Good Moment is an erotic thriller that is skin-crawling to watch but not in a horrific way. While the movie is technically very well made, it is as flat as an East Anglian city in almost every other department, in my opinion which seems to be in the minority.
The plot of Perfectly Good Moment follows Ruby (Amanada Jane Stern) and David (Stephen Carlile) an on- again off-again couple of eight years. At the beginning of the movie David thinks that Ruby has stopped wanting to see him (due to his controlling nature), she appears out of the blue six months later to resume their relationship. As David is lulled into a false sense of security by Ruby, she begins to hatch a plan to expose him.
The script for this movie is laughably bad, the dialogue spoken by these two characters sounds as if it came from Dennis Reynolds’s (From Its Always Sunny) erotic memoirs, especially in the scenes where David is trying to be romantic or seductive so that the end result feels akin to an ASMR parody of a terrible 70s porn script.
Moving on to the acting, although Stephen Carlile is an experienced and talented Broadway actor this is his first time acting in a movie and unfortunately it really shows. His portrayal of David comes across less like a convincing manipulative boyfriend and more like Dick Dastardly after graduating a series of voice projection classes. This is because he’s using a technique which is all well and good to use on stage, but which comes across as too overblown when it’s implemented in a screen acting context.
Amanda Jane Stern’s performance as Ruby, on the other hand, is perfectly adequate, while she isn’t given much to work with due to the script, she does however do a decent job of keeping her cards close to her chest before the big reveal at the end.
From a technical standpoint however, credit is due where credit is due because Perfectly Good Moment, despite its numerous shortcomings when it comes to acting and writing, is a well made movie visually. Greenhall lights each scene well, has a clear understanding of using specific camera angles to build tension, and along with the film’s editor Xiao Han knows how to cut a thriller.
If Perfectly Good Moment were played as a either a parody of Fifty Shades of Grey, or the 80s-90s erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction, Body Heat, and Basic Instinct it would be hilarious. Unfortunately, however, this is a movie that wants to be taken seriously, and given its lacklustre script and tediously hammy acting by Stephen Carlile that is something that is difficult to do.
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