Lifetime
Lifetime’s newest relationship drama, I’ll Never Let You Go is a cautionary tale about infidelity and not doing your due diligence before getting mixed up with someone who could put you, your marriage and your entire family in danger.
Meagan Good stars as Emily Westover, a working mom whose only child, daughter Sophia (Hana Huggins), is heading off to college at Berkeley, leaving her and her husband Tom (Thomas Cadrot) with an empty nest situation. With more alone time for them, Emily is hoping to rekindle the romance they’ve lost over the years as she worked and he was the stay-at-home dad. While Emily wants to get frisky, Tom just wants to focus on the book he’s been writing, suffering a bit of writer’s block, which only makes Emily feel more rejected and isolated. She continues to focus on her own work with an art gallery, preparing for the opening of a new exhibit. That is thrown into turmoil when the artist drops out at the last minute and the gallery has to scramble to find a new artist. But not to worry as the owner, Margot (Alana Hawley Purvis), has secured Italian photographer Carlo, who will be making his American gallery debut with them. Margot dispatches Emily to Carlo’s loft to see where he’s at with his work as he only has about half of the required pieces completed. Meeting Carlo, Emily is attracted to him and he is obviously attracted to her, but she keeps things professional … until she can’t.
As the deadline for the opening approaches, Emily is dispatched once again to the loft and is interested in Carlo’s process, but he needs one more image. He wants Emily to pose for him but she turns him down, however the chemistry between them is so magnetic that she does not refuse his sexual advances and ends up in bed with him. She sneaks out while he’s sleeping and returns home, guilty of what she’s done, but unwilling to tell her husband what has happened. Her co-worker Sasha, however, seems to see a certain glow to Emily and puts two-and-two together, but assuring Emily that her secret is safe … even though she wants to know all the details. Again trying to suggest some romantic time to Thomas, he again tells her he can’t because of his book, but knowing she’s been invited to Sasha’s birthday party at a local club he urges her to go and enjoy herself. Everything is fine until Carlo shows up, and hoping to avoid him Emily heads to the ladies room … and Carlo soon follows, locking the door (do these doors actually have locks?), and having sex with her right then and there. Leaving the room, Sasha finds Emily and tells her Thomas has been calling because Sophia got into a car accident, but she’s okay. Emily immediately returns home, and tells Thomas she’ll call Sophia in the morning. He thinks it’s odd that she doesn’t want to speak with her then, and drives to Berkeley in the morning to bring Sophia home for the weekend. Emily is happy to see her, but the gallery show is opening the next day so she has to focus on that, and tell Carlo she has to end things with him despite his attempts to get her to leave her inattentive husband. The night of the opening, everything is going well, and Thomas and Sophia surprise Emily by coming to offer support. Margot announces to the crowd that while most of Carlo’s photos have been sold, they have one more piece to debut and when the cover is removed it is a photo of Emily that Carlo snapped with his phone while she was asleep. Shocked by the image, Emily tries to claim to her family that the image was manipulated to look like her, and Margot is angry enough — she obviously was trying to get into Carlo’s pants herself — to fire Emily on the spot for being unprofessional and posing for the artist. At home, Emily has to finally admit that she had an affair and it meant nothing, but Thomas tells her to get out of the house because he needs time to think. Emily drives to Berkeley to explain things to Sophia, but when she gets there she discovers Sophia’s phone location pins her back at the house, unaware that Carlo had already gone there to lure Sophia into his clutches with the promise of an internship. Instead he’s now totally unhinged and holding Thomas and Sophia hostage, and Emily has to think fast to save her family and, hopefully, her marriage.
I’ll Never Let You Go is one of Lifetime’s better thrillers thanks to a decent script by Alex Wright, solid direction by Troy Scott, and the participation — both acting and producing — of Meagan Good. The story very logically sets up Emily’s dilemma both at home and with Carlo, and the entire situation plays out very logically even if the drama becomes a bit more heightened in the climactic moments. The story also allows Carlo to grow increasingly worrisome over the course of the film, not just flipping into a psycho in the blink of an eye. Carlo is really constructed as a nefarious seducer, and is even given a bit of a backstory when Sasha does some digging and learns he has a violent past with a previous girlfriend, perhaps something Margot should have looked into before booking the guy. Scott’s direction keeps the story moving without giving us any ridiculously over-the-top moments, guiding the cast to give very authentic performances.
Lifetime
As for that cast, everyone gives really fine performances. Good in particular carries the film, appearing in just about every scene. She is able to show that Emily does love Thomas, and she conveys the pain she feels by his rejection of her advances. She never lashes out though, and just focuses on her work, hoping that things will work out. Her seduction by Carlo also feels real as Emily finds herself appreciated by another man. Good’s performance nicely conveys Emily’s conflicted feelings, and she just makes Emily feel like a real person. Outstanding work.
Antonio Cupo also does a great job as Carlo, very European, very open with his sexuality as opposed to the more repressed Americans, never thinking twice about expressing his desires for Emily. And he manages to do this all without making Carlo feel creepy, at least at first, but the moment he snaps that photo of her sleeping in his bed, the look on his face speaks volumes, showing that this is an entirely premeditated move to break up her marriage, and his smug smile when the photo is unveiled in front of Thomas and Sophia and his reaction to Emily’s outrage only shows that he is descending into a bit of madness. When he does seek out revenge, he never plays things too over-the-top, bringing a real menace to the character, leaving the viewer unsure if he’s going to kill Thomas and Sophia (he believes without the family to tie her down, Emily will gladly follow him back to Europe). He is quite terrifying as he violently lashes out, but he never allows his performance to become cartoonish. He and Good also have great chemistry together which makes their attraction to each other all the more authentic.
Thomas Cadrot gives a nice performance a Thomas, frustrating in that he never realizes how hard he’s pushing his wife away. Hana Huggins is also good as Sophia, apparently not too shocked by her mother’s photo and a little too eagerly drawn to Carlo. Marnie Mahannah does a really good job as Sasha, showing some genuine concern when Emily becomes upset about her ribbing about her relationship with Carlo (before she knows the full truth). It was interesting to see Alana Hawley Purvis pop in as Margot. She seems to be a Lifetime regular in lead, supporting and almost cameo rolls, and she does a great job every time no matter the character (we’ve seen her in recent months bouncing between Lifetime and LMN as distraught mothers, a reluctant sister wife, a hiker trying to save a kidnapped child, and as a detective playing opposite her real-life husband). Lifetime regulars Roark Critchlow and Teagan Vincze also pop up for what amount to cameos, he as a detective and she as a real estate agent. It’s really interesting how, like Hallmark Channel, Lifetime has built up this stable of actors they can rely on for the biggest or smallest roles, and they always deliver.
Overall, I’ll Never Let You Go tells a dramatized but realistic story of infidelity and its repercussions, with a strong script, solid direction and a cast of professionals who make the entire story feel grounded in reality. This one is definitely worth your time.
I’ll Never Let You Go has a run time of 1 hour 28 minutes, and is rated TV-14.