Secret Life of a Dominatrix is a 2024 made-for-TV movie directed by Gabby Revilla Lugo and starring Mariel Molino and Andrew Biernat.
Secret Life is clearly post-Fifty Shades as the inciting incident is a group of women reading an erotic novel in a book club, and it also draws on the Netflix “female-centric thriller” genre. Generically, it’s an heir to the tradition of the direct-to-cable or direct-to-video erotic thrillers and melodramas of the 1990s: female subjectivity and sexual development, upper-bourgeois setting, the acute anxiety of sex and danger in a post-HIV world, sex scenes that stay well-within the lines of an R rating.
Secret Life is a little disappointing in the last regard, as there aren’t even any bare breasts, presumably to meet the requirements of the free streaming service Tubi. (One might ask, what is the point of a PG-rated erotic thriller?)
May, our protagonist, talks about a book called Secret Life of a Dominatrix with her book group. She’s stuck in a stifling marriage with Kurt, who is frequently absent with work, and an equally unsatisfying job. Kurt is not-so-subtly pushing her into the role of stay-at-home tradwife, and brings up her failed pregnancy and her affair with another man the previous year. For that, she gets to watch Hallmark romances with him, followed by uninspired missionary action.
Meanwhile, news reports in the background mention someone killing sex workers, dubbed the “Red Light Ripper.” May finds things like coming home to an open front door, or slashes in her car’s tires.
A member of May’s book group wrangles invitations to the exclusive fetish club Hide & Seek, and they take the opportunity to dress up. May looks awkward, wearing a cheerleader outfit. I will commend Secret Life for having kink party scenes at Hide & Seek in which the people have a variety of ages, ethnicities and body types. May and her friends take in the sights. May is taken with the venue’s owner/manager, Governess Anna, and says she wants people to look at her the same way.
Anna takes May down to the dungeon. It’s not clear whether this is a fetish club with a pro-dungeon attached, or somehow both? May is initiated into kink, though with a few struggles along a way. She grows as a dominant and re-establishes her home business too, while Kurt drifts further away. Meanwhile, the “red light killer” strikes again and again.
When May discovers that Kurt has also been going to Hide & Seek in secret to dominate women, she keeps at her dual life. She becomes friends with the staff at Hide & Seek, and gives them custom jewelry. However, Dee is soon killed by the ripper. May meets with her ex-lover, a cop, and is motivated to try to reconnect with Kurt by submitting to him.
Kurt isn’t just cheating on May, he’s the killer too. He’s been leading a Jekyll-and-Hyde life, squeezing May into a cutesy-couple Hallmark movie life while taking out his misogyny on other women. May manages to escape her bonds and strangle him to death with a whip.
Secret Life is a mess as a work of film. The story feels like somebody wanted to do a narrative of female sexual empowerment, and then some outside agency insisted on grafting on the thriller elements. The subplot about May’s previous affair is awkward; her former lover is introduced late in the film as if he is going to be a major character, but he never appears again.
Other things are just unexplained. Is Governess Anna’s establishment a pro-domme house or a kink club, or somehow both? Is May a client of Governess Anna or an employee? Where did May get the money to buy all her fetish outfits and gear, and re-build her jewelry business?
Finally, Secret Life commits a mortal sin of writing: after May’s final confrontation with Kurt, it cuts to the book club arguing about the ending. What we have seen has been the book series. May even talks about it as if she was the author all along. In other words, “It was all a dream.” I suppose we should be glad that Dee, the black sex worker killed by Kurt, is actually alive and well. But the ending confirms that Secret Life lacks the conviction to be erotically empowering or entertainingly sleazy.
