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Indie flicks
[Photo: Rainforest Productions]
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By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 5, 2002
Pandora's Box (R) (103 min.) -- It's still easier to find an interracial sexual relationship in American films than an African-American couple engaging in frisky business on-screen. That unofficial taboo is shattered by Pandora's Box, a kinky thriller from tiny Rainforest Films, creators of Trois and, more important, a bold method of distributing that 2000 release to theaters.
Rather than rely upon Hollywood connections, co-producers William Packer (a 1991 graduate of St. Petersburg High School) and his Florida A&M classmate Rob Hardy arranged limited distribution for Trois on their own, meeting theater owners face to face. The results were impressive. Trois opened on only 22 screens but averaged ticket sales of $11,540 per screen, higher than Scream 3, The Beach and Snow Day, which opened the same weekend.
The same strategy is employed with Pandora's Box, although the success of Trois made multiplex doors easier to open. Pandora's Box will expand its limited run to 60 screens nationwide Friday. It's a better movie than Trois and although squarely aimed at African-American audiences, it prominently features the cross-cultural appeal of sexual abandon.
Hardy and Gregory Ramon Anderson wrote the screenplay, with Hardy displaying much more confidence in the director's chair than Trois suggested. His first film was essentially Fatal Attraction with black actors, but Pandora's Box is more akin to Eyes Wide Shut and Basic Instinct, with its subtext of sexual obsessions. A little more money at his disposal makes an obvious difference.
Monica Calhoun (Love & Basketball) plays Mia, a career-driven psychologist whose cheating husband, Victor (Kristoff St. John), is giving her reason to stray from the marriage. Mia's handling of an oversexed patient named Tammy (Chrystale Wilson) leads her to a private club called Pandora's Box, where sexual fantasies are lived. Mia meets the mysterious Hampton Hines (Michael Jai White, Spawn), and an affair begins with a few identity twists.
Pandora's Box is practically made for late-night cable TV, the kind of guns-and-groans entertainment that looks better after the bars close. But it's also a declaration of independence -- for filmmakers and African-American moviegoers tired of having their lives dictated or reflected by somebody white and already successful in Hollywood. B-
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