After the screening of Going Under the director comes out to talk to the audience. He’s a psychoanalyst, when he’s not making films. He says his opinion, from working with many clients, is that childhood trauma manifests itself in adult sexual life. Masochism is rage turned inward, rage that would normally be released into the environment. The masochists pent up energy has become eroticized. Implicit is that masochists did not have healthy childhoods.

“Do you think I’m full of rage,” I ask my friend at breakfast the next day. I’m eating corned beef hash and we’re going to see a movie called The Lake House where Keanu Reeves dies in a car accident in front of Daley Plaza and Sandra Bullock can’t save him.
“No,” she says. “Yes,” she says, changing her mind. “You are full of rage.”

The Lake House, as expected, is one of the worst films ever made. But my friend wanted to see it and she lets me stay at her house when I’m in New York so I really didn’t have any choice.

I keep thinking about Going Under. There are great films about masochism and submission, but they almost always revolve around women or children, like Belle de Jour or Moonlight Whispers. Most others are just art film porn, lurid posters with subtitles and nothing to say. Porn for people that don’t want to watch porn or don’t want to admit to it. But there are very few films that take seriously male submission, fewer still with a straight male protagonist.

Going Under is a simple story. An older man, a therapist, seeing a professional dominant who is younger than him and very beautiful. She decides to retire. She can’t distance herself from her work. She says she’d like to see him for coffee. The narrative is structured to go back and forth in time, from their first meetings to the present to their most intense interactions in the dungeon.

Here are some of the more beautiful moments:

- He tells his wife he’s been seeing a dominant and she’s quitting and they might meet for coffee, that’s all. “Why are you telling me this?” she replies. “I thought you should know.”

- They are in session and he tries to have sex with her. “Do you fuck your clients?” she screams, pushing him away. “It’s not the same,” he responds. “It is to me.” Then she throws lube at him and tells him to jackoff. He sits with his back turned to her then she comes closer, runs her fingers through his hair.

- “I would never be able to get over how we met.”
“But we wouldn’t have met any other way.”
“I don’t want to be responsible for you.”

I don’t know how to do justice to this rich, nuanced film. But listen, he’s with his wife, and they’re sitting in armchairs on a lake. Their fingers are just inches apart. Their child is swimming. He tells his wife, “I love you very much.” “You hurt me,” she says. “I know,” he says, pain stretched across his face. “I’m very sorry.”

One of the things that is so interesting about this film is that the characters are essentially honest and aware of their desires. They talk through their scenes, they use safe words, and they push boundaries. The interaction between the client and professional dominatrix are extremely realistic. The scene in the S&M club is also true. “Take your clothes off and wait for me over there,” the woman tells him. “People will look at you but they won’t touch.”

Some reviewers didn’t think it was realistic that a wife would accept her husband seeing a professional dominatrix, but in reality it happens all the time. It’s also not uncommon for a dominatrix to date a client. Almost every professional dominatrix I know has dated a client at least once.

Though the protagonist tells his wife he sees dominants, being honest is not enough. He still falls in love and is more than willing to cheat on his wife. In fact, he already has emotionally. And there’s the question of age, the older man’s desire for youth, defense against mortality. The corruption of desire and how desire corrupts. Is a masochist selfish? Was he selfish to get married and then to insist on fulfilling his fantasies? Is that fair to his wife, his children? I would say yes, but it’s still a point that’s very open to debate. It’s healthier than at least one of the alternatives, which is to push the rage deeper, to bury yourself, to turn yourself off. Still it begs the question of whether it might be possible to find a life partner that could also fulfill these desires.

After the film the director was asked if the movie was autobiographic and he said yes and no. A woman complained about his use of the term erotic. She said he was using the term incorrectly and there was nothing erotic about the film. I disagree with you,I said, because I thought someone should. “Of course you disagree,” she replied. “You’re a man.”

See Also: Rumpus Original – A Review of Cadiallac Records

See Also: The Eyeball

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