Forsaking All Others

A domineering matriarch, Mrs. Newell, alarmed by her son Oliver’s blossoming ardor for the forthright Penelope Mason, spirits him away to a gilded resort that functions less as holiday haven than as carnivorous playground for the predatory widow Enid Morton. Cloaked in chiffon and calculation, Enid stalks the heir through moonlit corridors and champagne haze until the pair teeter on the precipice of scandal. Meanwhile, Enid’s husband—equal parts cuckold and cutthroat—hovers in the shadows, pistol glinting like a moral exclamation point. When catastrophe threatens to detonate the Newell name, Penelope, summoned by the very woman who tried to erase her, races to the resort. In a final reel that crackles with irony, she extricates Oliver from Enid’s silken snare, turning maternal machination on its head and forcing Mrs. Newell to confront the Frankenstein she forged.