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Not unlike the hedonistic characters in quick redemptive
turnaround at the center of this corporate erotic thriller,
The Human Contract is intent on having its cake and eating
it too. Which is to say that there's plenty of ongoing frisky
hot sex and assorted libidinous depravity, before a decidedly
incongruous cautionary family values proviso kicks in.***
The filmmaking debut of writer/director Jada Pinkett
Smith, The Human Contract intimates through its title, the
destructive contradictions that loom between emotional integrity
and the mandates of the ruthless corporate world. And likely
based on Smith's own negative observations hanging out in
Hollywood.***
Jason Clarke is Julian, an LA hustler on the rise among
a band of aggressive, hard drinking corporate hotshots.
When he's handed a potential billion dollar account from
a family values oriented client, Julian is ordered by the
company to ditch his pending divorce for now and maintain
a straitlaced veneer, at least until the signatures are
clearly in place on all necessary dotted lines.***
But Julian just can't seem to contain his erotic urges
or inclinations towards rough sex for long, as the kind
of guy who chases women with just about the same frenzy
he chases accounts. And he is soon stumbling into one scandal
after another. The primary catalyst for his sudden round
of unrelenting bad luck is Michael (Paz Vega), an exotic
vamp with kinky interactive obsessions whom he meets by
chance at a bar, while cooling his heels waiting for a date
he suddenly could care less about.***
And when Julian next encounters Michael on the street
one night and follows her to an outdoor screening of an
old Frankenstein movie in a cemetery, I kid you not, there's
no turning back for this designer suit stud and his combo
self-mutilating/voyeuristic hottie with a male name that
suggests, uh oh, abnormal dangerously predatory female desire.
Likewise set up as a prop for the usual bad mommy demonization
on screen, though it's never clear exactly why, is Julian's
resented shrewish suicidal single mother (Joanna Cassidy)
who looks nothing like him. While his sister, played by
Jada, resembles him even less, mix 'n match elephants in
the room which are never explained an iota.***
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