Body of Deceit

I watched Body of Deceit on the free streaming service, Tubi. Despite multiple lesbian scenes in the film, Body of Deceit is not listed as an LGBT film on the site. Which honestly, makes sense. This is a film made for straight people. But I will not be shielded! Show me what lesbianism and bisexuality looks like when made for a straight audience! I want to know! Oh… It’s bad? Well, that’s wildly unsurprising.

Body of Deceit is an erotic thriller, I guess. The thriller element isn’t itself erotic, there’s just a lot of random sex scenes. The film focuses on ghost writer, Alice. Alice was in an accident the previous year and suffers from amnesia. Her husband, Max takes her to their home on the Mediterranean to recuperate and start writing again. Max also hired a live-in maid named Sarah. You know how it goes. Max leaves for business, Alice and Sarah start getting busy. But Alice is also suffering hallucinations and Max and Sarah have motives beyond just getting her healthy.

Thrillers already tend to be a genre with only so many ideas. This goes double for ones without budget or artistic integrity and triple for erotic thrillers. The plot here is really weak. It’s a basic set-up, two acts of very little relevance and a third act full of unsurprising twists. Sarah has a sister who died in the accident Alice was in and she maybe stole her identity! Who cares! Max and Sarah are having an affair despite Max being terrible and it not being relevant to the overall plot! Max’s whole evil plan is just about acquiring Alice’s publishing rights? Truly the erotic element just over-complicates things. But without that element, there wouldn’t be enough content here to make a whole movie.

There is more lesbian content than I expected. But again, it is very much for straight men. Alice and Sarah hook up immediately. I think this is a symptom of a male screenwriter projecting his relationship with women onto these female characters. Sarah is hot, so why wouldn’t Alice just immediately hop into bed with her? Why would she question why Sarah just starts sexily washing her in the bath? There’s little conversation or relationship build-up, it’s just two hot women in proximity to each other who absolutely must start banging.

Saying this, the lesbian content wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. You don’t see the relationship develop at all but by the end, Alice confesses love for Sarah. And the film does end with the two women together having killed the two male leads. I love that for them! I think lead actress Kristanna Loken was also trying to give Alice’s feelings towards women some depth. She seems more invested in scenes with Sarah than scenes without her. But maybe this is just me projecting because I know Loken is queer in real life. While Body of Deceit did cross the very low bar of my expectations, nothing, not even queerness can save this movie from being shit. Couldn’t Kristanna Loken pick a better movie where she gets to have affections for a woman?

Unrelated to pretty much anything else, but there’s a rape scene in Body of Deceit. It’s not even remotely plot relevant. Max reveals he’s been having an affair with Sarah. They start getting busy, she starts protesting, he rapes her. But she still stays the night so Alice can catch them in bed together. The rape is never brought up again, even as a reason for the women killing Max. It’s just a sex scene that more easily and logically could have been consensual but nah, let’s make it sexual assault! That’s what people want in their erotic thrillers, right?

Body of Deceit is a bad, bisexual erotic thriller. Grading on the curve of bad erotic thrillers with queer elements, the lesbianism in this one is better than expected. But please don’t mistake that for being overall good. It’s still not. While there are elements of Body of Deceit that could have been worse, they’re vastly overshadowed by the elements that could have been better.

Overall rating: 3.3/10

Other WLW films in similar genres