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The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something is Gone is available to purchase or rent on-demand.
The fourth installment in the “Pete’s Perverted Pix” series.
DIRECTED BY: Joanna Arnow
FEATURING: Joanna Arnow, Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti
PLOT: Ann, a middle-aged single woman, has an unsatisfied lust for dominant men, but most of the men in her life are dispassionate duds.
COMMENTS: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed ties with Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key for the film I have reviewed with the most cumbersome title. “TFTtTfDSHP” will serve as the abbreviation.
TFTtTfDSHP is a deadpan comedy and a character study that’s almost too candid in dissecting the mind of the frustrated kinkster in the wild, driven to settle for the nearest thing to warmth in a cold world. Can a film be considered weird based on one performance? Writer/director/lead actress Joanna Arnow bares all in a story that’s at least a bit autobiographical (right down to having her real-life parents play her parents), while acting out a study in frustrated feminine sexuality. Her performance is so fearlessly open that it’s nothing less than heroic. This is one of the most honest portrayals not only of real-life alternative lifestyles and sexual expressions, but of 21st-century cultural frustrations in general. At the same time, Arnow, even while casually fingering herself while naked at the breakfast table or costumed as a pig-slave, keeps a firm grasp on her character’s humanity and dignity. She makes it clear that her Ann is actively the agent in her own world, seeking something better for herself. Her definition of better just happens to be different from most of ours.
For those of you who wonder “why do people want BDSM in the first place?”, films like this and Secretary provide clear answers. Secretary’s Lee has a psychologically damaged background and deals with it by engaging in thrilling, edgy fantasies so spicy that an ordinary relationship won’t cut it. In TFTtTfDSHP, Ann lives in a millennial-gray world of trivial humiliations and disrespect. She’s the black sheep of her family, her coworkers take sadistic joy in making her work life miserable, and she lives a lonely, friendless existence in a threadbare apartment in an indifferent city. A couple of hours of bedroom role-play is her only chance to feel like a whole person, to be the focus of somebody else’s attention for awhile. Her character comes off as a whiff anhedonic, hitting like MTV’s Daria all grown up to discover that adult life is just as miserable and unfulfilling as she expected it to be. Feeling intentionally humiliated, degraded, or objectified at least gives her the chance to feel something.
Even in gratifying this small pleasure, Ann is frustrated. We start with her ongoing nine-years-long relationship that amounts to being the booty call for Allen (Scott Cohen), an aloof, uncaring galoot who treats her like a piece of furniture. She’s desperate to mold Allen’s indifference into deliberate sadistic intent, but Allen is a man so devoid of imagination that he can’t even think up good scenarios when a partner’s willing cooperation is offered.
Ann goes looking for other men to fill the role in her life, but one after another proves himself an ill fit. Ann is one more submissive searching the world for her ideal Top, in a world where most partners barely know kink exists or whose sole conception of it is shaped by cheap porn. With man after man, Ann tries her best to live up to their expectations, going through the motions even if she doesn’t feel it, but we can see the huge gap between what she needs and what any man is willing to give her. In the midst of her adventures, her sister moves in with her after her own marriage has fallen apart. She proves to be one more self-absorbed person who treats Ann as a shoulder to cry on and then abandon. Her aged parents pick on her relentlessly, complaining she doesn’t spend enough time with them but then spending all their time together bickering. Pretty much everything on the forty-something age demographic’s list of horrors, including dealing with aging out-of-touch parents, is checked off here.
Lest we think Ann is a Mary Sue in an uncaring universe, the story exposes her flaws too: she’s nearly humorless, cold, cynical, and does nothing with her appearance at all. She’s so emotionally mute that when her dating profile asks for her interests, she gives answers like “I like really heavy meals that fill you up.” Her sole passion outside kink is Andrew Lloyd Webber plays, and she tunelessly sings “Les Miserable” lyrics even after her date states he doesn’t like those songs. When Ann finally meets one guy who shows her genuine affection, she doesn’t know what to do with him. By the time the tale’s told, she has had some nudges of character development, but mostly she sabotages her own happiness. Perhaps what she needs even more than a dominant boyfriend is a Lexapro prescription.
For downsides, this film is a formulaic exercise in indie-style dark comedy pacing, each scene a joke with one punchline followed by an awkward beat. This pattern repeats the entire movie, as if the story was designed as a comic strip. Some reviewers criticize it as too depressing, too slow, and, especially, find Arnow’s in-your-face candidness uncomfortable. The cinematography, mostly urban interiors, feels claustrophobic. Together with the monotone deadpan humor, I can see where this movie’s audience is limited to viewers with an abundance of patience. When Chris (Babak Tafti), the one decent guy Ann dates, comes along, his character stands out like an alien because everyone else in this universe acts like cardboard.
But there’s something much more important going on here. TFTtTfDSHP is a triumph of provocative film-making, a piercing study in contemporary repression, using the lens of alternative relationships to expose the difficulty of dating in the 21st century. Somehow, we have managed to collectively create a society in which none of us seem to fit comfortably, with everyone feeling like we live in a world that doesn’t make room for us. When it comes to sex, we make it up as we go along, hoping to find a partner who speaks the same erotic language we do, while ultimately realizing that society has made everyone nearly mute as far as love goes. Ann, kinks aside, is every person floundering around on dating apps trying to find a simple human connection with someone not entirely drained of life, while dealing with the frank reality that she’s no catch either.
For those of us in settled relationships, we heave a collective relieved sigh: Thank GOD we’re done with dating!
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: