Fetishes

• Director: Nick Broomfield
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Culture & Society
• Movie Type: Sexuality, Gender Issues
• Themes: Prostitutes, Voyeurs, Infidelity
• Release Year: 1996
• Run Time: 84 minutes

Plot

A wide-open mind would be a real boon towards enjoying this adult-oriented, way off-beat documentary look into the shadowy world of professional dominatrices and the masochistic slaves who pay dearly to be abused, ridiculed and tortured. British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield directed and narrates; he spent two months in a Manhattan house of domination interviewing both the mistress' and their diverse clientele. Though relatively few in the US actually participate in S&M, it is an extremely lucrative business. Highlights include scenes where a retired bank manager allows himself to be photographed being led around naked on all fours with a dog collar on his neck, a Wall Street Stock Broker with a thing for rubber and an interview with Pandora, the meanest mistress in the company. Pandora sleeps with Spike, an ill-tempered giant iguana. While Pandora complains that her scaly companion has recently frightened away any prospective lovers, Spike punctuates that by biting the cameraman Christopher Lanzenberg. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Review

Although it makes for no less fascinating a portrait of the S&M scene, director Nick Broomfield finds his usual approach to documentary filmmaking has its limits with Fetishes. Usually Broomfield, dealing with charlatans, simply plays dumb and lets his subjects explain themselves into incrimination, but in this film he finds subjects even more adept at role playing than himself; try as he might, he can never get the dominatrices to reveal anything less than a total commitment to their profession. Once the shock value of the subject matter wears away (which it does fairly quickly, even as the director trots out subjects with an ever-deepening commitment to humiliation), and the mistresses drop their guard a bit, their insistence on S&M's therapeutic value becomes quite persuasive. One client even insists that it keeps him from acting on his violent fantasies. Social value aside, the film makes a good case for putting prudery aside and acknowledging that for some people this kind of ritual shaming fulfills a psychological need incapable of being met elsewhere. In the end, even the eternally skeptical Broomfield seems convinced. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide

Cast

Mistress Catherine; Mistress Beatrice; Mistress Natasha; Mistress Delilah

Credit

Nancy Abraham - Associate Producer, Jamie Ader-Brown - Co-producer, Nick Broomfield - Director, Nick Broomfield - Editor, Betty Burkhart - Editor, Sheila Nevins - Executive Producer, S.J. Bloom - Line Producer, Jamie Muhoberac - Songwriter, Christophe Lanzenberg - Camera Operator, Robert Levi - Cinematographer, Nick Broomfield - Producer, Michele D'Acosta - Producer, Nick Broomfield - Sound/Sound Designer, Dick Farner - Sound/Sound Designer

Similar Movies

Exit to Eden; American Pimp; Sex: The Annabel Chong Story; Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes; Pimps Up, Ho's Down; Gaea Girls; Cathouse; Beyond Vanilla; Sex With Strangers; Bound for Pleasure; Gay Sex in the '70s; The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief

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