recommended

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Watched this film via a recommendation from the Amazon lists, and found it a very strange film indeed. It is not one I can describe easily, as it both uplifted me and also brought me down at the same time.It is - almost - a love story between two damaged and incomplete people, trying to find something that can make them whole, but not knowing at the time, that they are simply running away from reality.Some stunning images, clothing, and scenes bring the story to great heights, but the ending - although what needed to happen - brought things crashing down, and left me feeling very sad for both of them. A good film overall.

THE OUTLINE IS OLD, WELL-KNOWN AND... beloved. The eternal dipole. Male and female, the two initial poles, and among them a potential difference that creates the necessary energetic environment for everything to be born. The ancient game that nobody knows when it started but it is certain that it will never finish. Power play, submission, pleasure. A continuous flow of sexual energy, bridges built and crushed with a nod, a breath, a word, a moment of denial or a decision to throw anyone into the arms of Infinity ... with any costs, with any consequences. Cinema has always loved these schemes, these games, especially between the mentors and the schoolgirls, the gripping milfs and the coward, puzzled, 'enchanting' adolescent, the 'next door' teenagers... And the truth is that these movies, as simplistic or ' primitive ' are - as no one seeks psychological depths in the analyses of characters, nor complex internal routes- have always been watched with pleasure. And sometimes even with awe! Beyond any structural failures, the movie has its virtues. The main, to me at last, is that the aim is not to convict the somatic or sexual pleasures. The film leaves a light aroma despite its rather dramatic background. And if it's worth to be watched is because of this exact feeling that leaves at the end. If someone expects more in another, more ... kinky area ... well he should search for other movies, made by much more sophisticated filmmakers that were based on literary masterpieces and filmed in seasons where sex had conquered much greater levels of exculpation... socially and philosophically.

I have seen other BDSM films. Some I watched out of curiosity, others to see if it'd be told or used differently. They were all the same. This film starts out from an emotional viewpoint, in my opinion. A young teenage boy named Charlie goes through some horrible incidences from the start; most likely emotionally wrecking him and finds a sort of comfort in a BDSM mistress named Maggie who has emotional issues of her own. While the BDSM does play its role this film is not really centered on it, as a whole. This film seemed to be about people going through a lot of emotional pain. I can relate to that. A mother feeling as if she's losing her son (main character), a son who wants to escape, and the BDSM mistress going through her own tribulations with her own life, and a child of her own she is apart from but wants to be nearer to and even his emotional turmoil from not being near his mother. Like the toy gun incident. From his viewpoint it probably wasn't about the gun but the fact his mother gave it to him but he wasn't allowed to keep it. There is a bit of dry humor to this film, especially during the BDSM scenes. Not that the film is necessarily making fun of what these men's sexual fantasies are but that it just comes off funny. While this does have its dry humor this is not a funny film, in the least. So emotionally wrought. Every time Maggie dominates Charlie it felt like she was losing herself more and more.The legal age issue; I saw this before in "Noksaek uija" where apparently an older woman had a sexual relationship with a young boy (he was 19), the age of consent in that country, at the time that film was released, was 13. They changed that law since then but the character in that film was obviously not 13. Much older. In Australia the age of consent is 16 yet here it seems they have a social worker talk to Charlie and he states "I'm 16!" which he knows it's legal yet films like this like to say it's not or imply it; an untruthful bias that always seems to be on their line. According to Australian law on this subject (which I read) it is only illegal for someone to have sex with a 16/17 year old who is in a "supervisory" role. Maggie, even though a Dominatrix, is not in that role, so it's perfectly legal for them to have a sexual relationship. That's the lie this film tells; and films like it. If you think it should be a higher age don't lie about it in a film, take action outside of it. Like the other film, and being a technical rater, that deducts this otherwise emotional film down a bit. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed it.

Youngster meets mysterious middle aged female. What a rare work of cinema and beautiful, completely credible testimony of stretches in life that are anything but easy: Subtle yet outright in its set up of the human condition, this being tangled up in weird realities. Today I saw "Fifty Shades of Grey", which was not quite as bad as I had feared, but this one here is a entirely different category, it has true magic, like David Lynches " Blue Velvet", of which it can be called related and very worthy so. Every couple of minutes of this film are better than the whole of that hyped commercial glitzy picture before mentioned. Why does the crowd get to see the junk only?