Connie Macatuno’s “Guilty Pleasure” (2024) swirls around love and deception, spite and muffled desire. It’s an ugly vortex yearning for closure, confrontation, but its actors can’t rise above the unsure, insipid screenplay, even though they infuse the material with some heat passingly. Lovi Poe and JM De Guzman essay as once-lovers now slugging through vicious betrayal and repressed desire. There’s power in the equation, a lack of necessary coming to terms with actions and consequence waiting to strike through.
Guilty Pleasure (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
How Do You Rebuild After Betrayal?
Alexis (Lovi Poe) is in a relationship with her senior, Adam (JM De Guzman), at the Atticus legal firm. She had all these dreams of being married to him, honeymooning in Florence. Little does she know the heartbreak that awaits her. There’s a sudden discovery she makes of the engagement announced between Adam and their boss’ daughter. It’s a big, crushing betrayal. She realizes he had been two-timing both of them at the same time. He married the boss’ daughter to keep his career well-padded, wholly ignoring Alexis’ feelings.
She strikes up a friendship with a new intern, Matthew (Jameson Blake). Adam, though, hasn’t got over Alexis, even forcing her into sex. She keeps the episode to herself. When the boss’ daughter warns her to keep her distance from Adam, Alexis lets loose the deceptions of Adam. But it misfires, leading to the boss firing her with a threat that her supposed intimacy with Matthew can be construed as sexual harassment and hence would put Atticus in dire harm. It’s grossly unfair but she picks up her bags and leaves, pushed to start afresh.
Can Justice Prevail When Truth Is Clouded by Influence?
Several years later at her own small firm, she is still hurting. Her anger is fresh. She never got justice, brought Adam to confront his accountability. He still covets her despite being in a marriage. There’s so much of a backstory that holds the two together. Retribution and guilt hang thickly in the air but much of it goes unacknowledged, unsaid, not quite wrestled with. When the two share glances at the court or elsewhere, there’s resentment and awareness of what one has done to the other, without compunction.
Alexis may have lost the padding of a big law firm like Atticus but none of her confidence, skill, and tact. With her own savings, the firm she creates from scratch, with a savvy, sharp team with talent to prove and hunger powering them, is on a modest spree, attracting the attention of a high-profile client, Zachary (Dustin Yu), an influencer. It bodes well for the firm, since his association can rake in a massive sum. He asks her to represent him, a gesture he quips will be great for the image and business of both.
Zachary rebuts all of Madison’s accusations of rape, denying they were ever in a serious relationship. He calls her claims entirely fabricated, unfounded, baseless. Zachary says she got upset over him being close to another girl. Therefore, she has spun the rape narrative so as to get her own follower count surge and receive significant traction. She’s doing it all for the money, the influence, he insists. Alexis uses that as the base of her counsel.
Who wins at court?
At court, Madison unflinchingly reiterates her experience, that they had been intimate for a while but Zachary hid it from everyone. She has her heart broken in discovering his infidelity, and he forces himself on her, despite her repeated stress that she doesn’t want to. There’s also a minor track of Alexis having spent her life defending her father on criminal charges only to hear him confess that he’s guilty indeed. She’s devastated but keeps the fight for his bail going, pouring in time and money into the pursuit.
At court, she’s formidable. But there’s immediate tenderness between her and Matthew. It catches everyone’s attention and makes her former boss at Atticus and Adam uneasy. Therefore, Matthew is dropped from the case, as him being told that opposing counsel can’t appear so close and comfortable as he and Alexis have been. Adam swoops in as the new counsel.
Seeing her attacker as a counsel for the rape victim reorients her understanding, it can be argued. She seeks out the sole witness of Madison when the former had made the police statement. The conversation with her, Sharmaine, brings a shift and expansion of her perspective. She realizes what she must do immediately but it happens only after she defeats Madison’s plea for justice at court. There’s no evidence hence Madison’s account holds no water, has no thrust. Zachary’s statements prevail.
Guilty Pleasure (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Alexis succeed in punishing Adam?
Madison is heartbroken and deeply disappointed. She has no reason to believe in Alexis, when the latter comes forth urging for a reappraisal of the verdict that must be pursued. Madison charges her whether she feels guilty. It’s then Alexis opens up about being similarly betrayed and attacked and denied justice, because she chose not to speak up which Madison did. She insists Madison appeal against the court ruling.
Noreen Capili’s screenplay isn’t quite reliable in being intelligent enough to pace out the escalating realization. The emotional weight, hence, doesn’t quite sink in as much as the makers would have preferred, resulting in a stiff, manicured mess, despite the earnestness of Poe. The climax is even more hurried in trying to settle scores between Alexis and Adam. It’s hamstrung and unpersuasive in its haste, attempting to give Alexis a closure for her happiness but the entire thing comes off as force-fitted.
Surreptitiously, she follows Adam while he’s struck up a hookup at the place where Madison’s friend works. She videotapes him in a compromised position and threatens him, the tape as the thread making her in a more powerful position, seizing the vengeance she had desired. Alexis may have lost her chance through legal means, but she now has Adam vulnerable for the rest of his life, knowing she has a tape that can destroy everything he has built and accrued. There’s the suggestion of a nice, happy ending with Alexis walking off with Matthew, the two content and blissful, and who will now work together at her firm.
