The Art of Passion (2022) User Reviews

Good movie, however....

[cqtmwytfw · 5/10 · 22 August 2022]

I would think a high intellect female would not make careless mistakes as not changing security codes, etc.

If you are going to promote women empowerment, get better writers!

VIEWS ON FILM review of The Art of Passion

[burlesonjesse5 · 5/10 · 11 August 2022]

"Whatever you feel inside, let it come to life". Sounds like something van Gogh would say. Or wouldn't say.

Anyway 2022's The Art of Passion is pretty cut-and-dried. I'm serious. As something from the Lifetime TV network, I was surprised. There's no real mystery or intrigue (when there should have been). There's no big reveal or twist (when I thought there would be). "Passion" is one big red herring but what's the point? Said red herring never leads to squat.

Well at least The Art of Passion gets its title right. The film is in fact about art (there's an accomplished painter character involved) and passion (said painter and an ER doctor do the horizontal hokey pokey). The love scenes in "Passion" that are accompanied by out of place, techno drivel, are almost filler. I mean it's like the screenwriters ran out of stuff to pen and decided to just insert the softest of core porn. Heck, call the whole thing "fifty shades of meh".

The Art of Passion is about a doctor (Hope Williams played by Dakota Johnson lookalike Katie Reese) who gets terrorized by an abusive husband whose wife Hope is trying to protect. Meanwhile Hope is trying to get her groove back by getting busy with hunk James Sosa (played by Italian actor Victor Alfieri). The whole crux of "Passion" involves Hope running from said hubby (while losing her phone in the process) and doing the nasty with painter boy. It's all rinse, rinse, repeat stuff and then it ends without babble.

"Passion" has sterile production values, workaday editing, and the token, best friend persona who's always giving advice and can't stay out of everyone's beeswax. It's not an awful flick but did it have to be so anti-knife-edge and shamefully blase? It did. Lifetime seems to have gone on holiday here. Not enough "amour fou".

A PG-13 Steamy Thriller B-movie

[TheoBerwick · 5/10 · 10 March 2023]

I'm almost 40, and this movie felt like a throwback to those B-movie steamy-thriller movies on late night TV in the early 00s.

B-movie thrillers get a bad rap in some circles. I judge them for what they are; low-budget and formulaic, but that doesn't mean that they can't be enjoyable. I also think some people find enjoyment in the formulaic nature of them, because they offer comfort through predictability, and a happy ending.

I think reviewers here are being overly harsh on this film, but everyone has their own taste.

I came across this film because my mother is a big fan of B-movie thrillers. I was heading out the door, and caught the dinner party scene and I liked what I saw. I loved the pacing of the scene, and being a single male I also like the look of Katie Reese, so I decided to watch it at a later date.

I'll review it by taking it for what it is; a B-movie PG-13 steamy-thriller. No point in complaining about it being formulaic. The goal is to give us enough scenes of tension and eroticism that it's entertaining and arousing.

Positives;

Christie Will Wolf is the director and writer and her strength for me was undoubtedly the steamy scenes. She's able to create a slow building tension towards erotic scenes with great cinematography. I would like to see her do a higher rated softcore movie.

Kate Reese is the lead (Hope), and she has a bright presence, and incredible body. She made her character likable, I think just due to her natural energy. (At this stage in her acting career I can't see her playing the lead in a mainstream movie or TV show, but I can see her in more B-tier steamy-thriller genre movies or TV series, whilst she strengthens her acting skills. For me her strengths are her bright energy and sensuality, no doubt due to her dancer background.)

Victor Alfieri plays a charming gentleman (James), he made his character deeply caring, whilst also being capable of being playfully dominant. A counter to the character of the toxic masculinity of Arnie.

Together Katie and Victor created slow and sensual steamy scenes together.

Gregg Weiner (Arnie) for me he was the standout actor, playing the menacing husband with high intensity. I thought his final speech was convincingly delivered.

The standout scene for me was the dinner party. The scene plays out interspersed with the images and music of the violinist's at dinner, I thought the pacing was great. The director clearly has talent to be able to create a scene like that.

The best parts of the movie, were - understandably - the main selling point of this movie; the steamy-scenes. It's a lifetime movie and PG-13 so this is very-softcore, but there is enough implied semi-nudity and foreplay to genuinely be arousing (unless someone has spent way to much time watching 'the hub'). Katie was at her best acting in these scenes, likely due to her dancing background where sensual couples performances are common.

A number of scenes were genuinely tense.

The sets looked gorgeous.

I loved the soundtrack.

Negatives:

At times I felt that the the dialog was really unrealistic, sometimes people speak far to formally and logically (e.g. Hope talking to Arnie in the hospital "Further... in lieu of...", or when Hope was talking to the cop in her apartment "...with respect to...", way too formal for the emotion of the situation). When this happened it was distracting, and took me out of the movie. It was as if Christie Will Wolf had put parts of her script through an AI grammar checker, and the AI had rearranged the sentences to be formally correct but soulless.

A large part of what I also think let the movie down were any of the dialogue scenes where Hope wasn't interacting with James or Arnie. I think that Hope's character was at her best when acting with James, in terms of dialogue and Katie's acting, but I think her Hope's interactions with others struggled due to the dialogue and without Katie being bolstered by Victor's presence which seemed to have brought out the best in here.

Conclusion:

I gave it a 5 out of 10 because while I think the film has some great scenes, outside of those scenes the dialogue and acting took me out of the movie.

My advice is to enjoy it on an evening when you are in the mood for a very-softcore steamy-thriller that you can switch your brain off and enjoy.

######

Why I wrote this review:

I was motivated to write this review to give encouragement and visibility to movies that portray sexuality in a more sensual way. We have an overwhelming amount of 'hardcore' portrayals of sexuality even in mainstream movies (e.g. 365 days and Fifty Shades of Grey). Watching old late night softcore movies from the 90s and early 00s shows sexuality portrayed as sensual and passionate. (I'm not saying that we as a society can't or shouldn't have aggressive or vulgar portrayals of sexuality. I'm just saying that I think media is 'out of balance' and needs more sensuality.)

Another reason why I like this movie was that the leading man was not an 'alpha male' or a bad-boy-turned-good (e.g. 365 days and Fifty Shades of Grey), he's a charming gentleman. I think we also need more portrayals of men like that, especially in today's climate where 'alpha males' with toxic masculinity have become very popular with young men on social media, and with women in movies (e.g. 365 Days and Fifty Shades of Grey).

A movie you'll wish you hadn't even started watching

[rozapinky · 1/10 · 11 August 2022]

Excellent and well done. A huge effort was invested in the realization of this film. The producer and director tried their best to ruin this movie. The main actors made a superhuman effort to make their so-called acting as unconvincing and superficial as possible. 10 minutes of this movie seems like an eternity. What a relief when it was over! Kudos to the entire team - you managed to make a film that is impossible to forget. Guaranteed worst performance of the year.

No chemistry at all and this movie needed it desperately lol

[CranberriAppl · 14 August 2022]

Which means it fails at selling the storyline of these two "lovers." Putting "passion" in the title, but not having it between the characters is just setting yourself up to fail. This is one of those movies that more seasoned Lifetime actors and actresses would have never taken.

The scene at the violin concert was so cringe that I stopped myself from laughing. It was supposed to be dramatic with the strings in the background, but it did not work. I really don't want to go through the plot, because I'm working on not doing that i my reviews, but you can give this a miss. It's one of the worst of the year.

There is no twist if you're expecting one. And I low key was. But it's all played straight and there are no surprises. Even the couple of jump scares (which get me in any movie) weren't great.

She's being harassed by a stranger, so she puts her safety in the hands of a stranger?? Mmkay. The soft core description that other contributors are giving is accurate, but unfortunately for this movie, they don't even qualify for those late night Showtime movies from the 90s. They lacked all chem and I'm just like, why is she so trusting of this total stranger? Maybe it's bad acting or bad direction (or both), but she's never believably vulnerable even though her life is being threatened. I get this new relationship is supposed to "reignite" something in her, but the lead actress is so one note and charisma-less that I can't bring myself to care. Also what does the A plot (her stalker) and the B plot (their "passion) have to do with each other lol? Either plotline could have been dropped and it wouldn't have substantially affected the movie at all.

Filler movie, terrible movie, give it a pass.

Another thing that irritated me about this movie is, people lose phones all the time. The fact that she didn't 1.get a new one or 2.call her phone company to turn it off etc etc just shows this movie is using very old plot points for this. It's simply not believable that she would not have had her phone bricked to help deal with what her stalker was doing. No, to her it made more sense to try to go to his house and retrieve it.

Steamy & Sultry

[lavatch · 5/10 · 9 August 2022]

"The Art of Passion" (a.k.a., "The Provocateur") may be summed up in one line when an extremely eager couple step into the shower with each other: "May I soap your back?"

The film is structured around a set of steamy scenes with Dr. Hope Williams and Mr. James "Casanova" Sosa. Hope meets James at a showing of his art. She was an aspiring artist in high school, prior to pursuing an M. D. Almost instantly, the sparks begin to fly between Hope and James.

The omnipresent character named Arnie, who is stalking Hope is nothing more than a mechanical plot device that helps to fan the flames of the passion between Hope and James, as they move from chic place to chic place to avoid Arnie's predation. It wasn't very convincing that the police were unable to locate Arnie while Hope made a bee-line to his apartment to retrieve the phone Arnie had stolen from her.

At one point in the film, Hope's bestie Nina wants to know all the details of the love life of Hope and James. By that point, however, Nina was asking a purely rhetorical question since Arnie had already shot a film through a bedroom window of Hope and James in all of their glory demonstrating the art of passion.

While well-photographed and with elegant interior settings, "The Art of Passion" required exactly what the Queen told Polonius in "Hamlet": "More matter and less art!"

A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

[carolk-34813 · 1/10 · 26 September 2022]

I expected so much more from this movie. Was the plot about sex or the life of Hope being threatened? The sex scenes were totally ridiculous especially the shower scene. I would put that more in the category of pornography. For a girl who supposedly was supposed to be so conservative, she certainly didn't live up to that image. As for Victor Alfieri, his acting was mediocre and it seemed that his body exposure played a very important role. There was little chemistry between Hope and James especially during that horrible dance routine or whatever you want to call it. I think that Victor should be more selective in the movie roles that he chooses.

Confused

[rebma-08250 · 4/10 · 20 February 2023]

If you try to take a story and relate to real life (could be possible) situations, then don't with this movie. Unless you take showers with men you just met and then leave it at that.

I hated the music. I had to mute it towards the end. It took over the scenes and I really didn't like the sound.

I thought the bad guy, Arnie did a great job. Next would be the artist, but all he had to do was stand with her shirt off and stare at the Dr.

I wanted to fix the Doctor's hair. The bangs were so distracting. I kept thinking she would have a hIre makeover at some point.

LMN did not disappoint. They managed to get a an attack at a lake scene.

Here's a suggestion...

[fambizzsales · 2/10 · 9 August 2022]

If you're going to create an erotic thriller perhaps cast an attractive lead? This woman would get to attention from me on my drunkest of days. Which is odd cause she looks perfectly normal in other images so perhaps the director is just terrible?

Could not be worse..

[augustnederlands · 1/10 · 13 August 2022]

Could not be worse.. Kinda creepy movies and no one could make it worse.. Everyone is so freshman in filming, writing and directing.

One of movies you wish you never seen.

No wonder nobody famous has been involved in the movies.