“Unforgettable” (2017) follows successful chief editor of an online publication, Julia (Rosario Dawson), as she moves from Los Angeles to small town Pasadena to make a life with her divorced fiancé, David (Geoff Stults), who has a daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai). Though divorced for two years, Tessa (Katherine Heigl), David’s ex, Lily’s mom, and a lady who would lunch if she had friends, is triggered and begins to plot against Julia, who has kept a traumatic secret from David. Denise DiNova makes her directorial feature film debut after a prolific career as a producer. Christina Hodson wrote this script, would later go on to pen “Birds of Prey” (2020) and is credited with writing the screenplay for the upcoming “The Flash” (2022) and “Batgirl” (2022).
“Unforgettable” sounds as if it belongs on television than the silver screen or as if it is trying to capitalize off the success of “Gone Girl” (2014) with its icy blond, calculating victim. Even though it is not a masterpiece, this film has a lot more going for it than the average Lifetime movie. The entire cast is better than the story deserves.
Even the underwritten, forgettable David manages to remain sympathetic through much of the film though he could be unlikeable from the opening scene. Stults, whom I know as Stargirl’s bad bio dad, manages to rescue his character from being the type of entitled guy who expect his women to follow him and fall in line, but is trying to escape the prison of white supremacy expectations, abandon a life as a wealthy workaholic, create something with his friend, Miguel—who never gets a memorable line, be a better father and decided that he wants a woman with her own life. He does not shy away from Julia’s trauma.
When Tessa figures out how to surreptitiously hit David’s triggers so he begins to distance himself from Julia, he lost me when he changed Julia’s “our” to “my” day referring to Lily’s visitation schedule. It was legally accurate because Lily is his daughter, but up to that point, he was fine with Julia shouldering his caretaking responsibilities while he was working. Ordinarily I would negatively view any parent who immediately without advance informed consent checked in with their partner regarding exactly what the partner is willing to do for a child that is not theirs. Since Dawson plays Julia as enthusiastically embracing her new responsibilities, and David backed up Julia’s unpopular decisions and validated her, I reserved judgment on David for so rapidly making Julia feel as if she was in a reboot of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
“Unforgettable” is not about two women battling over David. He is irrelevant, a vehicle like bread or popcorn to get to the butter. The women are battling over Lily. It is about two women’s responses to past trauma and how it is reflected in the way that they approach raising a child, i.e. healing their inner child. Dawson, Heigl and Kai are masters at conveying their characters’ hopes, desires and fears then take turns being heroes and villains. They manage to elevate tropes into a masterclass of psychological profiles to get the viewer to sympathize with their character regardless of how we may feel going into the movie. I love Dawson and would watch her eat a bowl of cereal so I was slightly miffed that like the New York Times, this film felt compelled to humanize the villain and felt as if it gradually spent more screen time on Heigl as the film unfolded. It was done well, and I am a sucker for a good character study so I will sign a waiver this time. Cheryl Ladd plays Tessa’s mom, and every indulgence of her granddaughter is a passive aggressive criticism of her daughter. Tessa has clearly failed to escape her mother’s shadow. I would love Dawson to comment on her physical, acting choices the first time that Julia peeps the three generational conflict and calculates her response. I am certain that I missed layers of meaning and nuance in that moment.
Without ever mentioning race, “Unforgettable” is fraught with racial tension. Though Julia is bafflingly successful in a poor paying industry, writing, her otherness, i.e. her race, relegates her to a lower financial class. DiNova makes sure that every microaggression lands. Lily turns up her nose at Julia’s gift, and I actually sided with her rudeness because bed bugs are real. Tessa complains about Julia’s “spicy” food. Julia gets treated like the nanny/the help than a potential stepmom with the way that both Lily and Julia never recognize that Julia has a right to her space and privacy in David’s house as his romantic partner though Lily’s invasion gets reframed as acceptance. Once Tessa realizes that she has the most leverage by playing the victim and casting Julia as the physical aggressor, she changes her tactics. Even though Dawson does not just identify as black, her character is stereotyped as the scary, angry black woman, and Tessa falls back on patriarchy’s reflex to protect her from the aggressor.
“Unforgettable” tantalizingly implies that in a parallel universe, Julia and Tessa could be friends or more. There is a weird parallel sexual scene where each woman puts herself in the position of the other when engaging with their respective exes. Tessa is thrilled, and Julia seems repulsed and disgusted by her advances on her fiancé. In her prior sex scenes, Julia is an enthusiastic partner, but she seems to understand that she betrayed herself and her partner for having an ulterior motive. Julia tries to be like Tessa, and she just is not. It is another way that she feels inadequate though David has never expressed dissatisfaction with their relationship. Again the men are irrelevant. The subtext appears to be that the women’s attractions can only be acted through their men, not with each other, but it is ultimately one-sided. Tessa established herself as having more in common with a predatory man than the average woman in the way that she psychologically tortures Julia, including spying on Julia while she is naked and stealing her underwear, and treats physically vulnerable men.
“Unforgettable” does not stick the landing. By the end, I did not want Julia to stay with David because if you must prove yourself to your partner, you have already lost the relationship even if it is understandable. I would not be able to forget that failure. Also while I love that Tessa had an epiphany, and Julia retained her humanity and character in the denouement, the resolution still makes Tessa win because in the real world, such an act would still cast Julia as the villain and act as a wedge in her relationship with David and Lily. The happy ending is not credible.
“Unforgettable” is an entertaining, basic film that plays on women’s fear of playing by society’s rules, the ensuing anger when she is not rewarded, a woman’s fear of sacrificing some independence in exchange for accepting traditional roles, the consequence of being placed in danger and feeling powerless. If you like the cast, it is a real treat.