Separate Lives

At this point, most people who have seen any number of Pascal Amanfo films know what to expect. You should expect to see a lot of beautiful people in beautiful clothes in some sort of an irregular movie. By that I mean that at the end of the movie some wicked twist upon counter twist usually occurs.

And true to his style, this movie was no exception. There was Yvonne Nelson representing beautiful people, and if the amount of characters wearing MAC’s Heroine lipstick in this movie is any indication then MAC is making a killing. By the end there was also a twist in this movie, except this time the twist was so very obvious that you could have smelled it coming from a mile away. So when the narrator proudly says “bet you didn’t see that one coming?”, my response is “yes, in fact I did see that one coming”.

Separate Lives is the story of a newly wed couple who move into a wealthy dream neighborhood only to find that their neighbors are not exactly the sanest of the lot. On one hand there is an overly jealous lesbian couple, then there is a 70 something year old man married to a 20 something year old and then there is a wealthy imbecile living in his inherited mansion with his carefree nurse. The one that poses the most surprise is when they visit a home where both of their exes now live as husband and wife.

Watching this movie, it is really difficult to determine the direction it is following because you don’t, at any point, understand any of the events that led you to that point of the movie. Things just happen and we accept them and some of the scenes hope to be humorous but most of the scenes fail.

Yvonne Nelson is playing the usual Yvonne role – the stuck up fashionista girl, and Toosweet Annan is playing the male equivalent. The one that was hard to grasp was the knockoff Majid Michel that is casted as Yvonne’s husband. One fifth of the time you could excuse his performance as acting but most of the time it was simply confusing. Roselyn was definitely the one to watch in this movie and the only one who elicited genuine laughs.

The movie is a bit too risque for most audiences as there are numerous sexual inuendos, sexual conversations and others randomly placed throughout the movie. Even though the movie has a smooth pace and is easy to follow, you’re not really certain exactly what you are following, and by the end, it is arguable that anything has been gained from the experience.