Cover

Eden Corrupted

The flesh is weak but the spirit is indestructible in “Cover,” a ham-fisted morality tale eager to prove that infidelity may be bad but playing with a member of one’s own team is infinitely worse. Structured primarily in flashback around one of the most inept interrogation scenes in movie history, “Cover” introduces us to Valerie Maas (Aunjanue Ellis), a photographer and saintly homemaker suspected of murder. “I’m innocent,” she protests while a solitary light plays across her face like Noir 101. »

If "Cover" has practical advice for wives living too-good-to-be-true lives, it's that when your husband says, "Maybe I'm not the man you think I am," consider it a big warning. A ham-fisted mash-up of African American melodrama message flick, "Cover" opens with a crime of passion, then becomes a flashback whodunit told from an interrogation room where murder suspect Valerie (Aunjanue Ellis) tells a D.A. (Clifton Davis) and a grizzled cop (Louis Gossett Jr.) how her perfect life fell apart. Something was hinky with psychiatrist hubby Dutch (Raz Adoti) when they moved from Atlanta to Philadelphia and an old flame of his (Paula Jai Parker) suddenly went from flirtatious to suicidal, and his two college buddies (Leon and Roger Guenveur Smith) started behaving like sinful tempters from a religious tract. »