Mutimedia Concept Production Presents, Majid Michel (Frank), Smith Asante (Leslie) Kalsume Sinare (Catherine), Prince David (Max), Martha Inkoah (Mabel). Narrator,Pascal Asante; Screenwriter,Pascal Asante. C2010
Open Scandal reminds me of Pleasure and Crime, I reviewed recently. Both Pleasure and Crime and Open Scandal have the same premise: sex, sex, sex, drug, drug, drug, and Alcohol to the third power. Both Pleasure and Crime and Open Scandal, attest to the fact that the most common pleasures in life are sex, drug, and alcohol, and the most common crime in the world is caused by sex, drug, and alcohol. It could even be assumed that sex, alcohol, and crime are symbiotic, first cousins in the realm of behavioral science.
Lady Catherine (Kalsum Sinare) and her son, Leslie (Smith Asante) inherit a mansion and a big 
business from a deceased husband, and Leslie steps into his father’s shoes as managing director, but comes on board with a smooth talking, childhood friend, Max (Prince David). Mother and son are having a ball of their lives. The father left plenty of money in the bank. New cars, booze, and drugs littered their lives.
Max is not doing well with his girlfriend, Mabel (Martha Inkoah). Financial constraint and all and, the relationship is at a breaking point because Max would not commit to marriage in a hurry. He is in secret rendezvous with Lady Catherine, so she leaves. Leslie’s and in fact Max’s long time failed college friend, freshly deported from America, arrives in town and he’s homeless and upon consultation with Max and Lady Catherine’s blessings, Leslie brings him home to their mansion.
Upon seeing Frank, Lady Catherine immediately falls into a heat like a young puppy dog wanting to be sexed up by her son’s best college friend. She’ll find a comfortable corner in the house and from her point of view, spies on Frank sitting outside with her son and friend, and she’ll start to gyrate, imaginatively in Frank’s convulsive grip and having a sizzling sex with the young boy. I tell you I love that scene! Call me a pervert, but I played that scene over and over until I went into the shower and took a long hot bath. A steaming one at that.
In no time, with a wager of good times with her, Lady Catherine promises Frank $50,000, and with other perks if he could satisfy her sexual urges. From then on it is all sex, sex, and more sex, until this one day, Frank walks out of the room for the last time, and the next time, we heard he was dead. Max for one, won’t let Lady Catherine go without paying him the money she promises him, and as if in a form of blackmail, he threatens to expose her. A shrewd woman, Lady Catherine, though she’s a nympho. Lady Catherine wants to meet Max at the Galaxy Hotel, so she can give him the money . The next time, we see Max, he’s in a coma, in a hospital, wrestling for his dear life. Two young boys, the ages of her son, who had secret love affairs with Lady Catherine, one dead and one in a coma fighting for his dear life!
The element of the style used by the writer, Pascal Asante and the director is excellent. Writer Asante used a narrative voice hardly used in our films (Nollywood and Ghollywood). He tells the story through the mind of an imaginary writer sitting in a darkened room with his cat, spying and commenting on the lives of the characters in the story. He tells the story objectively, putting the camera and the viewer as observers, and witnesses only, but not to take sides or identify with any of the characters, thereby, standing aloof from emotional manipulation.
Also in one instance, and in the scene where Max and his young girlfriend, Mabel are in the room, the narrator let us into their inner minds and share with us their thoughts. That is a very good narrative device because he let us, even as the couple sits quietly with no throwing bedside lamps at each other, into the latent of their minds as it brews emotional conflict.
There are so many ways to tell narratives. You let a character in the movie tells the story; an invisible narrator tells the story; the narrative has too much talking and less visual or more visual and less talking. Here, remarkably, we have less talk and more visual, and that is why as the curtain falls, and at Lady Catherine’s end of the telephone conversation with the judge, we only hear a gunshot. The story ends, leaving the audience with the feeling that the lives of the characters in the story still go on and by doing so, the element of the narrative device has been successfully applied. Kudos!