Betray (2023, USA)
A lower budget Tubi movie, the lead actress Shi Smith makes this worth watching. She's pretty and does a good job portraying a smug, bored wife Candace.
Her husband Joel is scrambling for work, sometimes he's out of town. Candace is bored with Joel and their home life together. Candace works as a hairdresser with her pal Stephanie. Stephanie's boyfriend is Deon who is a player.
Deon starts seducing Candace. makes his play on her birthday when Joel gets hung up out of town. Candace and Deon fuck a couple of nights at an Airbnb he owns.
Stephanie and Joel both get tipped that Candace and Deon are having an affair. A couple of nights later everyone shows up at the Airbnb with Candace and Deon in bed. A knife and a gun are drawn, there are two shots.
SPOILERS
Epilogue: Joel has kicked Candace out and looks happy living with a new woman. Candace has a baby, likely Deon's it's not Joel's. She comes by to pick up her mail, Joel gives her the mail, pretty much just closes the door in her face.
Candace is left looking at the closed door with no home, no marriage, no husband, a single mother.
The Painted Veil (2006, China, Canada, US)
This is a good movie, the screenplay is adapted from the novel by Somerset Maugham, and has beautiful photography of locations in China. Set in China in 1925, stars a very pretty Naomi Watts as Kitty, married to Walter, a doctor.
Flashback scene newly arrived in China, Walter awkwardly has sex with Kitty. Kitty becomes bored with the marriage and has no loyalty to Walter who treats her well.
Kitty joins the social scene and brazenly starts an affair with their friend Charlie. Walter knows about them and is going to walk in on them in bed, turns doorknob but changes his mind.
Walter confronts Kitty (this is a great scene), she confidently talks down to him trying to dictate how their marriage will end. Walter’s not having it, tells her she must leave the big city and follow him to a small rural village where he’s going to be treating a cholera epidemic. Kitty of course says No, Walter says “Fine I’ll file for divorce tomorrow”. Stops Kitty in her tracks says she and Charlie and I are in love. Walter tells her “OK, go plead your case to your boyfriend, if he accepts you I will give you a divorce”. Oily Charlie is married and of course tells Kitty he doesn’t want her. She has no choice but to follow her husband to avoid scandal, and she’s pregnant unsure who is the father.
It’s off to the rural village, a rough voyage for sophisticated Kitty most of it traveling by palanquin. In the village their marriage is very frosty, Kitty is bored, no affection for her husband. But she sees the heroic job Walter is doing trying to help the villagers, and warms to him, begins showing him affection, has her baby, and gradually falls in love with her husband. She grows to regret how terribly she treated him and acted like a slut and is ashamed she isn’t sure who is her baby’s father.
