In Netflix Movies that combine eroticism and thriller usually have good results (in number of clicks). MEA culpawhich premiered this Friday on the streaming platform, joins that group in which, always, always, two characters do not feel attracted, until they do.
Or maybe the first time criminal defense attorney Mea Harper (Kelly Rowland) saw Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes) Moonlight y Bird box: blind) felt something. The same goes for the painter, accused of having murdered his Mexican girlfriend of six months.
Zyair does not walk with a broad brush (it is not a euphemism) but is a renowned plastic artist. The paparazzi chase him after Hydie’s death. But they didn’t find her body, or so it seems.
The issue is that Mea, who according to the title is to blame, is the sister-in-law of the prosecutor in the case. The accused wants her to defend him.
Mea’s relationship with her in-laws, except with her sister-in-law, is terrible. She and her husband are doing couples therapy (she found out that he had sex with another woman), but she covers for him and fixes him since he was found drugged months ago while being an anesthesiologist. In the blacksmith’s house…
Her brother-in-law, who wants to run for mayor of Chicago, sees the case as a springboard, and does not treat Mea kindly either.
The mother is worse: since they say she has cancer, Kal fills her with objects, which his wife pays for, because he doesn’t have a quarter of a dollar.
And eroticism?
Well, don’t despair, when Zyair tells Mea that he is going out dancing, and she advises him not to, that he should look distressed, the guy takes her to a place where there is unbridled sex and Mea is even offered ecstasy.
There will be more, including paintings, but we are not going to ruin with spoilers what for many will be the attraction of the film.
There are things that no matter how much there is a clever twist in the last 20 minutes, they don’t close. They say there are fragments of the Mexican woman’s skull in a Zyair painting in her house. Zyair is fed up, because Hydie sent a video from her cell phone to her sister (he didn’t even know that her girlfriend had a sister) in which she says that, if she appears dead, it was him.
The man has all the tickets to earn a life sentence. He does not seem sociable, but rather self-centered, and every time he opens his mouth to respond to Mea it is not to provide a clue, but to tell her that she finds him attractive, and that it makes him erotic to see her.
All the characters are African-American, except Kal’s mother, who knows how he came out with that skin, if he is the son of the redhead Kerry O’Malley (the secretary of The Killer).
They don’t have to know it, but Kelly Rowland is also a singer: she was part of the group Destiny’s Child with Beyoncé. But here she doesn’t sing.
Thriller. United States, 2024. 121′, SAM 16. Of: Tyler Perry. Con: Kelly Rowland, Trevante Rhodes, Kerry O’Malley, Sean Sagar, Shannon Thornton. Available in: Netflix.