Review of Masquerade

Masquerade (1988)
7/10
Nice little Hamptons thriller
3 July 2009
Warning: Spoilers
I liked it. Setting and script are interesting, though not always especially original-- some of the plot twists seem to be thrown in because the story starts to lag. There is one fairly steamy sex scene between Lowe and Tilly, from the days when audiences liked sex scenes that didn't look like rape scenes.

As in so many films since the 1960s, the acting is so technically skilled and low-key it can fool an audience into thinking it's not acting at all...until they see the same actors playing totally different roles in other movies. Tilly is just superb; you don't see her at all, you just see the shy heiress. Even pretty-boy Lowe is believable in an absurd role that must have been hard to play (among other things, in his opening love scene, he hides the family jewels behind a door with a slick little move). Cattrall, in a small part, is excellent-- her sloppy character just seems to have turned up. And Glover (with messed-up Caesar hairdo) is his usual effectively spooky self as the villain. Delaney doesn't have a lot to do but she's loose and convincing whenever she's on.

You can tell this one was written for the screen by the name the writer chose for the heiress: "Olivia Lawrence".
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