Taboo: Family Secrets
What harlequin romance novels are for women, soft-core erotic cinema is to men. Last year, I wrote about a documentary called “We Kill for Love,” which looked at the direct-to-video erotic thriller genre, which is a lost form of exploitation cinema. If you look at streaming sites like Tubi, however, you’ll find the genre’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. In “Taboo: Family Secrets,” writer-director-star Deborah Twiss makes herself front-and-center in the action, and manages to find some twists and turns along the way. If this genre doesn’t do anything for you, it’s unlikely this film will, but I enjoyed it, especially as it found some emotional ground to cover.
Amanda (Twiss) is married to a lawyer, Lukas (Costas Mandylor), who is not often around, typically because he is sleeping with an associate (Patricia McKenzie). Amanda is the stepmother for Lukas’s two kids- son Tyler (Staffan Edenholm) and daughter Jillie (Ashley Westover). It is ultimately a broken home, however, and not just because of Lukas’s infidelity; Jillie hates Amanda, and Tyler has been gone for three years. When he arrives home, however, things get more complicated as Amanda- an artist- finds herself drawn to Tyler, who likes her as a subject for his photographs. It quickly becomes more than that.
Twiss isn’t just interested in showing a younger man and an older woman hook up; Amanda and Tyler both have a creative side that allows them to bond, as well. Amanda also has secrets, as is indicated in an early discussion with Lukas, but which will not be revealed until an old flame, Jazz (Russ Camarda), comes back into her life. This is a film that is, first and foremost, about a fractured family, and they were fractured before Amanda and Tyler’s affair begins. Try as she might with Jillie, Amanda just cannot replace her mother, who died tragically shortly after Amanda and Lukas met. And with Tyler leaving the nest, he hasn’t been there to help possibly bridge the gap. Meanwhile, Amanda and Lukas have a shell of a marriage, as is obvious early on in Amanda’s awareness of his infidelity. It’s a familiar dynamic in some of these erotic dramas centered around families, but it’s handled well here, especially as we start to learn more about Amanda. It’s not thought-provoking cinema, but it was engaging, even when everyone has their clothes on.
If you’ve read any of this at all, and didn’t immediately get repelled by the title or poster, this film is worth checking out in the same way people stalked the video stores on a Friday night, looking at VHS cases with scantily-clad women, and finding something to take in for purely carnal reasons. Twiss has a little more on her mind than that, and that’s a pleasant surprise for this viewer.
