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Going Under

2004, Movie, NR, 92 mins

Going Under: Review

GOING UNDER
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Welsh-born actor Roger Rees bares body and soul in director/cowriter Eric Werthman's handsomely photographed examination of the dynamic that unites a masochist and the sex worker who caters to his desires. Clingy masochist Peter (Rees), a psychotherapist, has been a regular client of German-born dominatrix Suzanne (Geno Lechner) — who is, to say the least, ambivalent about her work — for two and a half years. Suzanne's decision to stop working at the dungeon and return to making art emboldens him to ask if they can see each other on the "outside." She agrees, and after Peter's wife (Kit Flannagan) leaves to spend the summer working on a book in Nova Scotia, they meet for a drink. Over the course of a couple of months, Peter and Suzanne meet repeatedly, share their childhood traumas — Peter had a speech impediment and Suzanne was branded a slut as a teenager; both had difficult relationships with their mothers — and make themselves miserable. Suzanne can't get past having met Peter as a client and resents him for trying to push the boundaries of their relationship even before she walked away from professional domination. Peter is overwhelmed by how desperately he needs Suzanne — or is it "Mistress Diana?" — in his life, haunted by the knowledge that his commitment to S&M games disturbs his wife and concerned that he's in such a knot that it's beginning to effect his work. Rees' performance, of the variety customarily called "fearless," is the only reason to endure this tedious, arid glimpse into the S&M subculture. It's evident from the outset that Peter and Suzanne have no future outside the carefully controlled confines of a strictly business relationship, and neither is a sufficiently interesting character to make the buildup to their inevitably breakup interesting to watch. The red-lit dungeon scenes manage the remarkable feat of being lurid, clinical and really embarrassing at the same time; the embarrassment is occasioned less by the copious nudity — all by Rees — explicit intimacies and fetishistic eroticism (including but not limited to stretching on a rack, piercing and flogging) than because the painfully pretentious voice-overs are so painfully banal. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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