“Bitter Desire” on Blu-ray from Sector 5 Films!
Pursuing a dangerous criminal leaves police officer Steve injured, sidelining him from work for weeks, if not months. Two weeks after the altercation, an at-home physical therapist tends to Steve’s painful injured leg and as he works toward recovery, fighting boredom along the way from being confined to home and limited in his movements, a revenge scheme is being plotted behind prison walls as the ruthless criminal Steve helped put away green light’s his sociopathic girlfriend Sasha to infiltrate Steve’s life and destroy it by all means necessary. Removing the regular hired physical therapist from ever returning to Steve’s home, Sasha impersonates as his new therapist to get the lay of the land and buddying up to not only Steve to gain his trust but also his wife, Lexi. Becoming closer than any therapist and patient should ever get, Sasha finds herself falling for her mark and will do anything to get him all to herself.
Nathan Hill, the multi-faceted filmmaker from Australia, is back with a new feature length film, the erotic-thriller “Bitter Desire.” Following suit from his last film, the melodramatic and science fictional invasion of the husband snatcher “Alien Love,” director Simon Oliver returns to the director’s chair and reteams the once Aliens-are-out-there documentary director with lead actor Hill. Unlike “Alien Love,” Hill takes a backseat to penning the script, leaving that duty in the hands of Thomas Bodine in his debut feature length narrative after his credits with a pair of UFO and Alien documentaries in his little flying saucer black box. Hill also produces the film, not bucking the trend from over his last few productions such as with “Alien Love,” “Lady Terror,” and “I, Portrait,” with fellow mysteries of the universe documentary filmmaker, Charles Thompson, filling in a coproducer role position under Hill’s studio company, NHProductions.
Hill stars as Steve, introduced to audiences scouring through a burning building looking for a community-terrorizing criminal named Andrew. “Hotel Underground” actor Tass Tokatlidis embodies Andrew as the mean-faced villain with a shaved head and a magnificent beard breaking Steve’s leg over-and-over again with a crowbar. However, Tokatlidis, who is an Australian Professional Wrester that comes with some acting chops of showmanship, is not the chief threat as Steve’s direct antagonist. That role is performed by Tokatlidis on screen girlfriend Diana Benjamin in the therapist infiltrating role Sasha and, in comparison, Benjamin’s wooden performance doesn’t convey or carry evocation and leaves her scenes’ vibe with less dramatic or arousing sway and Tokatlidis had more infliction of pain behind the eyes, more intimidating aspects, and a range of aggression . Yet, sex sells and Benjamin wins out with a desiring figure that goes toward the story’s erotic thriller model. Another area where sex sells in “Bitter Desire” strives and succeeds well in is with Shar Dee as Steve’s wife Lexi. Lexi’s workplace professionalism contrasts against her more sexually aggressive nature at home by considerable pleasure with Dee going above and beyond with topless nudity. Lexi’s also willing to take the fight to the next level when protecting what’s hers. Wile the femme fatale and the strong wife have objectifying weight to the tale, Steve lacks a path or a goal in a character who frequently notes fighting boredom. He dips his toes into alcoholism, idle hands activity of cataloging his unexplained equivocal collection of home movies, and skirts around naively with flirting with his therapists, even with his true hired therapist Harmony (Hao Dao) and while the sexual tension is thick between Hill and all the women he interacts with, Steve has no inkling of something amiss until it hits him in the face, literally. Rounding out the cast are peripheral supporting characters that don’t add anything to the story but indorse sidebar scenes of random and unimpactful office gossip between Lexi’s colleagues (Natalie Rowe and Michaelle Dowlan) and a pretense of unheeded advice by Sasha’s semi-bosom close friend (Eden Madebo).
Premise wise, a convict’s sociopathic girlfriend committing to her boyfriend’s revenge plot but with a plot twist of her falling for her target is the very definition of erotic-thriller cinema, that may also dip into life imitating art in some areas of the world, that plays to the tune of “Fatal Attraction” or “Body Double.” However, the script needed to be fleshed out in areas that don’t quite pan toward story positive reinforcement. Areas such as Steve’s laid up days around the house where he lounges for long periods of time and audiences don’t need to be overexposed to Steven’s aimless lingering but rather just elucidate boredom which he does, multiple times, creating a double dipping aspect that makes his exposition unnecessary. Steve also has a compulsive obsession in opening and checking the contents of his small safe that isn’t explained and because it’s not explained, his constant checks result in Sasha catching sight of his passcode. Other things that go unchecked and unexplained are the arbitrary-to-the-story gossip between office colleague Annie and Phoebe, therapist Harmony’s unwillingness to warn the police or even Steve after being let go from Sasha’s theft of just her work badge, and the gold bar in Steve’s aforementioned safe. Why does a police officer have a gold bar in his safe? Too many questions weigh heavy on “Bitter Desire” to work effectively as intended, to arouse with eroticism between Shar Dee’s intimate moments with her husband Steve as well as Sasha’s simulated act of fellatio to stir up trouble and to thrill us with deceptive infiltration with a revenge plot that ends violently in its own form of antisocial obsession. What’s required is more intimate, or close to intimacy’s edge, interactions between Steve and Sasha to really threaten Steve and Lexi’s marriage, to invite trouble head-on in parallel with the plot, and to have Steve conflicted of his choices and consequences that would truly have “Bitter Desire” live up to its title.
The Simon Oliver and Nathan Hill “Bitter Desire” is a killer love triangle and is now available on a Blu-ray home video from distributor by Sector 5 Films. The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, 25GB BD-R with the purple underbelly is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Not the smoothest digital result as details don’t emerge from their full potential in sharpened textures but the overall result is clear and distinct in its ungraded exhibition of a less-is-more approach to filmmaking. Visual range begins and ends with CGI smoke and flames at the start of the film criminal pursuit, but why the building is engulfed is also a mystery that’s goes unsolved, and the flames are rough and ready ablaze in vf/x composition layering. Skin tones are in natural tone through the ungraded coloring. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix offers frontloaded sound and dialogue through the dual channels. Dialogue is very much in the box, meaning it’s echo in large rooms with the reverberation bounce and dampened by the innate mic on the camera, like a handheld with a mic attachment. Some post diegetic sounds contain corrected action and storyline flair with popping of a gunshot and the crackling of a flame, but that’s the extent of narrative that’s dependent on dialogue, an aspect that doesn’t fill all the moseying voids of downtime between interactions and plot moments. Special features include are cold table reads with the actors reading through their roles, a Nathan Hil land Shar Dee audio commentary running in tandem with the feature, fight choreography, an interview with Nathan Hil land Shar Dee, an interview with Nathan Hill and Nathalie Rowe interview, a still gallery, and a trailer. The all-region release has a runtime of 70 minutes and comes without a listed rating, assuming not rated.
Last Rites: “Bitter Desire” has a decent enough foundation to be sate the erotic-thriller subgenre but above that is a house of cards structure ready to tumble around its stiff acting and mixed-in meandering.
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