Joanna Arnow, left, and Scott Cohen in a scene from The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.The Associated Press
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Written and directed by Joanna Arnow
Starring Joanna Arnow, Babak Tafti and Scott Cohen
Classification N/A; 87 minutes
Opens at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto June 18 and the Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque June 21; on-demand starting July 2
Critic’s Pick
Contempt and apathy ooze in the opening lines of Joanna Arnow’s directorial debut, The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed.
“I like how you don’t care if I get off. Because it’s like I don’t even exist,” a naked Ann (Arnow) utters to her half-asleep lover Allen (Scott Cohen, who played the square, unsexy Max Medina in Gilmore Girls).
Ann is a thirtysomething Jewish woman eking out a passable existence in New York, with parents who annoy her just as much as she annoys them, a tedious, soul-sucking corporate job, and a love life that needs a makeover. The film will resonate with any hollowed-out millennial (especially if, like Ann, they’re kinky).
In every part of her life, Ann is alone. She pursues pointless arguments with her parents and can’t remember their birthdays. Ann’s employer awards her a one-year anniversary trophy, oblivious to her three-year tenure. When her recently divorced sister stays over, Ann contorts her body awkwardly to apply eczema cream on her own back. Upon leaving, her sister offers to visit weekly to apply the cream. It’s a sweet if clueless gesture from someone accustomed to the inter-dependence of marriage, ignorant that singledom self-reliance isn’t so much sad as it is necessary.
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When Ann chooses to move on from her decade-long BDSM arrangement with Allen for better fish in the sea, she finds dating is less water than fire – a dumpster fire. Arnow’s stylistic choice to demarcate each dating misadventure with a title card named after each disposable lover underscores the demoralizing scarcity of the sea.
Are these lovers any better than Allen? Just barely. Among several outfit options offered by her new dom Elliott (Parish Bradley), Ann chooses to have sex in a pig costume, an image so absurd it’s easy to mistake the many farcical sex scenes in this film as kink-shaming.
Joanna Arnow stars as thirtysomething Ann in The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.The Associated Press
But Arnow isn’t interested in mocking BDSM play. She’s here to normalize it, to demonstrate that even kinky sex can be boring. Kinks are hot, sure, but what if you’re so apathetic about life you can’t even fathom the idea of fantasizing?
When Elliott asks her what she’s been fantasizing about lately, Ann has nada. When Allen asks her what she wants them to do together, she’s equally clueless. She assumes being a submissive means not having to think even outside of play, letting her lover decide. Instead of finding pleasure in sexual subservience – clearly a preference of hers – Ann has become grumpily complacent in life, a natural response when inescapable millennial-life stressors pile up.
It’s only when Ann meets Chris (Babak Tafti) – cute, friendly, offering an emotional and intellectual connection, but zero BDSM experience – that she begins to light up. Here is someone who gets her. But what of their sex life? It’s the beginning of a beautiful kinky relationship.
The Feeling has the deadpan humour of Napoleon Dynamite. Its slow pace depicting menial tasks is reminiscent of Jeanne Dielman. It asks similar questions about millennial New York life as Girls. And its naturalism is straight out of mumblecore. Yet Arnow carves out her own style. But what is truly groundbreaking is her depiction of BDSM.
It’s only when Ann (Joanna Arnow) meets Chris (Babak Tafti) that she begins to light up.The Associated Press
Ever since Fifty Shades of Grey brought an underground sex subculture into mainstream daylight, few pop-culture depictions have gotten BDSM right. Most commonly, stories depict a lack of boundaries and consent (which makes sex play abusive, not consensual) and pathologize BDSM, insinuating kinksters must have a traumatic backstory.
The Feeling has loftier ambitions than to simply right those wrongs. Regardless, it’s ahead of its time in its casual insertion of power and impact sex play: That the film shows us bad examples of such play normalizes the idea that yes, even kinky sex can be bad. Hilariously so. But why focus solely on that point when you can weave kink into a fleshier, existential, slice-of-life character study?
If there’s one stereotype the film does address, it’s that kinksters want love, too. Finding an emotionally fulfilling relationship that is also sexually compatible? The feeling is, the time for doing that has, indeed, passed. Arnow nonetheless suggests optimistically you can have your cake and eat it, too, so long as you keep trying, and failing, at love.
Special to The Globe and Mail