Twisted Spinster

Herewith a further installment in the fascinating account of the contents of the Netflix envelopes in my mailbox.

As much as I love the current Doctor Who series (which I have already expounded upon ad nauseum), even I occasionally get tired of the bishonen-boy sweetness and light. Well, I’ve found an antidote of sorts in a role that the actor who plays the current doctor, or more likely his management, doesn’t seem all too interested in recalling to the public eye. That would be David Tennant’s over-the-top portrayal of Your Psycho Ex–Boyfriend in a sharp little thriller called Secret Smile, which is basically a Lifetime Movie of the Week on steroids.

Never mind the kids hiding behind the couch — Tennant goes at the part of Brendan Block with such relish that the parents will be hiding behind the couch. Brendan is on the surface a rather rootless ne’er-do-well who seems to exist solely to make the supposed protagonist, a rather ordinary girl-woman of the modern type (snazzily careered up — she’s an architect with a half-done flat and an Apple notebook — who isn’t averse to taking a strange man home for some hot anonymous sex) miserable. Her name is Miranda Cotton (all the character names are these oddly Hobbity things), and the actress who plays her is either more subtle than I was able to catch on to or has had one too many botox injections. (To indicate intense emotions she purses her lips a bit harder.) Miranda picks Brendan up at a skating rink and he’s the stranger he takes home for a sex scene guaranteed to make teenage girls who write Tenth Doctor/Rose fan-fiction squeal in glee. (This is neatly bookended by a rape scene near the end that seems to have been inserted solely to traumatize those same fans for life.) Unfortunately, Brendan turns out to be a sort of male version of the character Jessica Walter played in Play Misty For Me. Only instead of getting crazy, he gets even.

As written and acted, Brendan’s character is despicable, yet I found it impossible to not become a fan. Here’s Brendan smacking a hysterical woman who has been so far the sort of insecure, needy pill that even the nicest of us has itched to slap once in our lives; there he is barging in upon our heroine, who by the way never seems to think of changing the locks on her doors despite her initial upset that Brendan had lifted her spare keys, to bellow menacingly at her (in this scene Tennant is wearing the Master’s coat and leather gloves, rrrowrr! Tell me John Simms didn’t watch this movie for pointers); here he is gloating over Miranda’s accusation that he married her best friend (dumping her sister on their wedding day to do it too!) for her money and house: “Isn’t it wonderful?” Okay, maybe this makes me a bit of a psycho, but if you don’t half want to push the heroine’s annoying whiny “depressive” brother off the ledge he finally jumps off of, after Brendan’s “helpful” coaching, then you are a better person than I am. In the end, the only way to get rid of Brendan for once and for all was a bit of subterfuge and the apparent fact that in the UK you can be put away for murder for life on no more evidence than a set of bloody keys — no body needed. Brit readers, if I have any, can this actually be true? If so, then as much as I am an Anglophile, here’s one more reason to be glad we Americans broke free of the Empire.

(Secret Smile is not recommended for family viewing unless said family consists of adults with an astringent and unforgiving view of human nature, and a very black sense of humor.)