Burning Betrayal Review: For this Brazilian thriller erotica starring Giovanna Lancellotti as Babi, Leandro Lima as Marco, Camilla De Lucas as Paty aka Babi’s friend, Bruno Montaleone as Thiago aka Babi’s best friend and accounting partner, and Micael as Caio aka Babi’s cheating fiance, director Diego Freitas adapts Sue Hecker’s bestselling novel O Lado Bom de Ser Traida (rough translation: The Good Side of Being Betrayed). Written for screen by Camila Raffanti, the steamy flick released on Netflix on October 25, 2023.
Set in Sao Paulo, the film deals with Babi discovering her fiance cheating on her, eventually pushing her into a sweltering affair of her own amid a nexus of lies and secrets endangering her life. Burning Betrayal has a runtime of 1 hour and 38 minutes and is streaming with English subtitles, dubbed audio, and other languages for international audiences.
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–O Lado Bom de Ser Traida Review Contains Mild Spoilers-
Burning Betrayal Review
The lack of originality reeks right from the beginning as the movie commences with Babi’s unconscious desires trying to tell her something through a scorching fantasy. Soon after, Babi uncovers her fiance Caio’s lies and finds out that he’s been cheating her all this while. Yet again craving for her turbulent past, which is never truly talked about in the movie, she again hops onto her motorcycle and ends up joining a bike club, but not before she stumbles upon the same man from her dreams, who also happens to be the judge leading the hearings of a lawsuit against her ex-fiance, also one of her accounting clients.
At this point, it feels like there’s no need to even watch movies like this on Netflix anymore, simply because we all know what’s going to happen. If you’re not tired of hearing this same statement over and over, then sure, tune in again and see it for yourself. The streamer clearly knows what its trying to sell with these narratives that go nowhere.
They rope in stereotypically attractive leads for these eroticas and then let the scorching chemistry between the straight couple do the talking. Without a solid story, movies like Burning Betrayal make way for just another erotic premiere to satiate your Fifty Shades of Grey and Sex/Life cravings, and each of these title’s name already spells it out for you what they’re all about – high on production value p*rn videos crafted out to settle down thrilling fantasies otherwise also brimming to the top on fan-fiction platforms like Wattpad.
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Despite not having met any of its characters, you already know how their mind functions and what they aspire to do – the leads simply want to race into bed with each other, while another predictably close character to the protagonist plots for their downfall in the shadows, appearing to be on best terms with them for the sake of pulling off their facade.
Instead of being disappointed for these projects and how they fare out, I’m actually sad for them and how unoriginal they are, in addition to having no voice for themselves. Their plot doesn’t lead anywhere except the bedroom or other places for the same deed to be performed a bazillion times till the entire runtime of the film runs out.
Somehow all such movies or other titles present the female lead already happy in her relationship with a guy who obviously won’t stick with her in the long run, till she meets another mysterious man who swoops her off her feet within days of this supposed major heartbreak. This long-running fantasy hasn’t died in years, and till the day OTT platforms, especially Netflix, keep green-lighting such projects, we’ll be served with the same rotten content till the end of time.
On top of that, what’s even sadder is that the leading characters of such movies always have far worse friends to back up their supposedly attractive fantasies. Not once have these other supporting characters had a mind of their own to pull their loved ones off the path of the same cliched downfalls. It won’t take you long enough to figure out who the bad guy is here, much like other films that basically announce their names right at the beginning while pretending to hide their faces in plain sight.
As far as the romantic track is concerned, the Burning Betrayal movie falls prey to the same pattern of similar titles from the same category and never tries to build up the tension. From the moment the main duo locks eyes with each other, we know what’s going to happen. And yet again we’re introduced to another one of those men with deep voices who’ve had a troubled past, and guess what, only coming together with the female lead will fix their otherwise affluent lives. Sparking these characters with the obvious scent of mystery, this O Lado Bom de Ser Traida adaptation has no intentions of making something unique out of its 98 minutes of runtime.
Burning Betrayal Netflix Movie: Final Thoughts
As always, these movies are visually delectable for the eyes in terms of the attractive cinematography (a nod to yet another steamy Netflix series – Through My Window: Across the Sea and its prequel), but they all begin and end with the same steamy action that eventually runs out of fuel owing to how stale this approach is that the “bad boy” trope is no longer an exciting means of attracting audiences even well versed in the Wattpad talk.
O Lado Bom de Ser Traida is now streaming on Netflix.
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