Movie Review: Sexually-attracted StepSiblings in a Rich New Setting — “My Fault: London”

Argentine-born Sevillian novelist Mercedes Ron has made a pretty good living off her rich-stepsiblings-incest intellectual property, the “Culpables Trilogy” — “Culpa Mia,” “Culpa Tuya” and “Culpa Nuestra,” which translates as “My Fault,” “Your Fault” and “Our Fault.”

Being young and affluent and sexually transgressive, these books have been cranked out as streaming service cinema for Amazon and Netflix. The latest adaptation of this material Anglicizes it for MGM/Amazon.

“My Fault: London” makes the heroine a Floridian surfer who gets a “fresh start” in London thanks to her mother marrying a genuine “Daddy Warbucks.”

Mimicking the plot of the first novel, Noah (Asha Banks) loathes the “spoiled Daddy’s boy” Nicolas (Matthew Broome) at first sight. He may be rich and hot, but they’re “complete strangers living together,” albeit in a roomy mansion where they can “stay out of each other’s way.” And he’s just as rude as can be.

“How the lowly have risen,” he smirks.

Their parents (Eve Macklin, Ray Fearon) try to remedy that by throwing them together on social occasions and forcing rideshare app developer Nick to take Noah wherever he’s heading in his McLaren or that hot modified Japanese street racer he likes taking out.

Because Nick is a “bad boy” partyer, a down and dirty street drifter, hanging with a Fast and Furious crowd. And he’s a bare knuckle brawler, risking his pretty face to prove his worthiness among the hoi poloi.

“Any other ‘bad boy’ cliches,” Noah rightly asks?

Did I mention Noah’s the estranged daughter of a race car driver, with quite a bit of NASCAR and Kart training under her belt?

That’s sure to be catnip to Nick, who’s soon all about what’s under her belt.

Yeah, that’s a tacky and trashy way of putting it, but that’s this movie in a nutshell — long, leisurely and louche. What its most sorely lacking is what it sort of aims to be — lurid.

They’re turned-on by their shared sexiness and common pursuits. But the overheated payoffs are tame and tepid — nothing like the build-up.

The melodramatic additions to the plot include the reasons the father (Jason Flemyng) is estranged, the ex-con street-fighter/street racer (Sam Buchanan) who has it in for Nick, Nick’s semi-estranged Mum and the kid “sister” he’s just starting to know, all of which is a lot to lay on a story about two horny young people acting on their impulses, despite the marriage of their parents.

The Brit Banks (of TV’s “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”) does a decent job portraying an unimpressable American stuck in London, living in a mansion, weekending in Ibiza, attending charity galas thrown by her stepdad, wondering about acccess to stepdad’s exotic-car-filled garage.

Broome (of TV’s “The Buccaneers”) carries himself like a convincing insolent rich lout.

And the car chases and brawls pass muster, even if the plot turns too-predictable-to-tolerate early on.

But the slick, shiny and cliche’d “romance” they’re trapped in is more “trash” than “pulp,” a story that’s so worn — the played-down “incest” labeling included — as to feel as if we’ve seen other versions of this on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Which we have, or could have sworn we have.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual content

Cast: Asha Banks, Matthew Broome, Enva Lewis, Kerim Hassan, Sam Buchanan, Eve Macklin, Ray Fearon and Jason Flemyng.

Credits: Directed by Charlotte Foster and Dani Girdwood, scripted by Melissa Osborne, based on a novel by Mercedes Ron. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 2:01

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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