In the Realm of the Senses (aka Ai no Corrida, “Bullfight of Love”) is a 1976 Japanese-French film directed by Nagisa Oshima and starring Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji. Amazon
The film is a fictionalized version of the true story of Sada Abe, who in 1936 Japan was arrested for the murder of her lover. She was found carrying his severed penis and testicles in her kimono. The film makes this a story of doomed lovers in a hostile world.
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Femina Ridens (aka The Laughing Woman, The Frightened Woman) is a 1969 Italian psychological drama, starring Philippe Leroy and Dagmar Lassander, and directed by Piero Schivazappa. IMDB
Dr. Sayer kidnaps Maria, a young woman, and locks her in his prison-like apartment, saying he will psychologically torture her into loving him, then kill her. Maria, however, is much more than she appears.
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Remedy is a 2013 drama directed by Cheyenne Picardo and written by Picardo et al.
A young woman known only by her nomme de domme, Remedy (Kira Davies), explores the world of professional domination and submission. She has some experience with BDSM at a night club, where she met a woman named Astrid, who hooked her up with a dungeon in NYC. Her motivation isn’t clear, whether it’s money or something else. (She has an unseen boyfriend and works as a children’s tutor.)
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My Normal is a 2009 comedy-drama about a professional dominatrix living in NYC, directed by Irving Schwartz, written by Abdul Malik Abbott, Renee Garzon, Keith Planit, and Adam Sales, and starring Nicole LaLiberte. Amazon
Natalie (aka “Ashley”) juggles her work as a pro domme with pressures from her family to get married and have kids, and looking for love as a lesbian. She gets her break to work in the film industry but encounters a new set of problems.
Continue reading »https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS-ccDTp1NE
TammyJo Eckhart and I review the lesbian romantic comedy S&M Sally (2015).
A Woman in Flames (Die Flambierte Frau) is a 1983 German film about a woman who leaves her husband to become an escort. Amazon
Eva (Gudrun Landgrebe) is a housewife whose husband criticizes and disdains her. When he ignores her at the party she set up, Eva suddenly packs a bag and walks out.
After learning how to be an escort from a friend, Eva hooks up with Chris, a male escort who sees both men and women. He aspires to run a restaurant with an art gallery.
Eva moves in with Chris, and they become like a husband and wife who are both sex workers.
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Walk All Over Me is a 2007 Canadian comedy/crime thriller.
Alberta, a young woman, flees a drug deal gone wrong in her small town. She arrives in Vancouver with only the clothes on her back and seeks out the only person she knows: her old babysitter, Celene.
Celene now works as a pro dominatrix, part of her “life plan” to become an actress. She reluctantly takes Alberta in.
Continue reading »TammyJo and I discuss Punish Me! in-depth.
R100 is a 2013 Japanese absurdist comedy. A depressed man enters a contract to be assaulted by dominatrixes in random places at random times.
It starts off relatively realistically. Katayama is a depressed furniture salesman dealing with raising his young son while his wife has been in a coma for years. He visits a company known only as “Bondage”. The host has him sit on a merry-go-round and view dominatrixes. The offer is a one-year contract during which different dominatrixes will assault him unpredictably. Katayama agrees.
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The Counterfeit Traitor is a 1962 spy thriller starring William Holden. I’m covering it solely for a couple of scenes.
Holden plays Eric Erickson, an apolitical American everyman living in neutral Sweden in the early days of WWII. Allied intelligence blackmails him into working as a spy in Nazi Germany. While slowly paced at the beginning, the tension picks up as Erickson sinks deeper into his cover and becomes entangled into the war whether he wants to or not.
Inevitably, Erickson’s cover is blown, and he has to depend on the resistance network to get him back to Sweden with vital intelligence. His backup contact is just a street address in Berlin. This turns out to be in the city’s red light district, with sex workers standing on the street or posing in windows.
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