A Tale Of Obsession, Submission And Tortured Love
Peter, a married psychotherapist, and Suzanne, a professional dominatrix, have
been engaged in an affair of sensual dominance and submission in an S&M dungeon
where they must abide by the rules. Now, those rules are about to be broken when
they agree to see each other on the outside. As Peter becomes increasingly
obsessed with the troubled Suzanne, they embark on a sordid psychosexual journey
into their tortured pasts through their most carnal desires.
Tony Award winner Roger Rees (THE PRESTIGE, THE WEST WING) and Geno Lechner
(SCHINDLER'S LIST, IMMORTAL BELOVED) star in this starkly beautiful
Award-winning film that brilliantly illuminates the dark world of S&M,
fetishized eroticism, and the disturbing consequences of blurring the line
between fantasy and reality.
Going Under is a
2004 drama film about a married man and a partnered dominatrix who form a
personal relationship and begin seeing each other outside her workplace. The
film stars Geno Lechner and Roger Rees and was co-written and directed by
psychotherapist Eric Werthman. Its first public showing was in 2004 at the São
Paulo Film Festival. It debuted theatrically in 2006 in New York City, and was
released on DVD in 2007 through the independent company Blue Underground.
Going Under was praised for giving an in-depth look at the emotions involved in
a sadomasochistic relationship, and received mixed reactions to the clinical
approach of the film, influenced by co-writer/director Eric Werthman''s
background.
User Reviews
:
Melancholia
8 May 2008 | by oOgiandujaOo (United Kingdom)
We have a therapist Peter, who is lost, and a mistress Suzanne who is
emotionally constipated and a little bitter. Whether Peter is a successful
therapist or not, who knows, the movie is cliché free, nothing is being
force-fed to the audience. We''re shown a real man, a man who like all of us was
a child and had to grow up. Only Peter dreams of rebirth, that is what his
sessions with Suzanne are all about. He gives up the reins in an acknowledgement
that he has not got whatever it was he was looking for (not necessarily success,
which is the cliché most American movies use), and he''s willing to let someone
else take over. He wants help, the way his mother helped him overcome his
stutter when he was a child.
Suzanne is an outsider, a girl with a foreign accent who became a pariah at
school after fellating a boy who then told the whole school. Hers is a fantasy
of control, and of detachment, a kind of revenge.
The movie is a pavane, slow, delicate, intriguing, melancholy. A subplot which
could be easily missed is Peter''s daughter, who we never really see up close.
She sends a postcard from Venice, a beautiful black and white photograph of the
Bridge of Sighs. In the final shot of the movie she is paddling a bright yellow
canoe up and down the river, at a distance. So what we have here is a man
becoming a statue, slowly crystallising, the potentialities of life
disappearing, clearly counterpointed by the life of his daughter. "Isn''t it
funny...", he said, "how once they tell you everything, and now they tell you
nothing." Going Under is a very quiet film, there are no pop culture references,
no special effects, no regurgitation. It takes place in an anonymous America, a
place devoid of national sentiment. The movie is commenting on two individuals,
not the state of the nation, and really not the BDSM community (we are shown a
scene in a bar that really juxtaposes what goes on in the community generally to
what is going on with out characters specifically, which is quite different).
Quite how such a personal film ever got made I don''t know, but I salute the
filmmaker Eric Werthman for this attempts.
It is clear that some of the movie-making is not professional, one example being
that you can hear Suzanne and Peter talking in a car when the doors are closed
and the camera is outside, this is a paradoxical sort of a scene where the
status of the camera as interloper is compromised. Also the acting is not always
wholly capable. But I think that the suspension of disbelief is never quite
compromised.