The film I watched this week was a documentary called “Fetishes”. I had just finished taking an Abnormal Psychology class for my psychology major where we discussed in detail about different types of fetishes so when I saw this documentary on hulu.com I though it would be interesting. I thought wrong.
The documentary follows the director Nick as he spends a few weeks at Pandora’s Box, a S&M parlor in Manhattan, where he follows the mistresses around interviewing them and their clients. The crew for the film was extreme small from what I could tell. Nick the director was also the audio recordist and interviewer. There was one other guy who was the cameraman and that was it. I was impressed with the shooting since they had to work in low lighting and tight spaces so even though the footage wasn’t amazing it was great for the conditions they were working in. Also they shot this way the whole film, even though there were times they could have easily set up some lights, they didn’t, that way they kept the same feel throughout.
Overall, the film wasn’t informative but felt more like a promotional video for Pandora’s Box. It just listed different fetishes people had and just asked superficial questions. In my Abnormal Psychology class we had done case studies analyzing different people who have these types of fetishes and the studies were fascinating. The reason I feel the studies were more compelling than the film was the fact the studies had stronger character development. The film tackled topics like the cause of their fetishes and how they hide the fetishes from the rest of the world but does so in a superficial way. For example he asked one may why he likes to dress up as a women and he said because he likes to do it and the director left it like that and didn’t develop deeper. All the people the director interviewed were very interesting people but I feel they were too complex for the director to interview. What I think could have made this film more interesting was if the director wasn’t asking the questions but an actual psychologist. The director had no clue about what he was documenting which cause conflicts between the interviewer and the interviewees. I know you don’t want to know everything before entering a doc because as you learn as the viewer would learn but you need to know some before hand so you can avoid causing problems.
I was disappointed in this film because the film failed to delve deep into these people’s character and instead focused on shocking image of people being tied up. I was amazed how often the director would ask an interviewee a question and mid-answer he would cut the interviewee off and ask another question. I feel you should never interrupt someone while interviewing them. The other reason I was upset with the director for interrupting was when as the interviewee started to say something deep and interesting but he would cut them off with another superficial question. If he had just let the interviewees keep talking, I feel he would have captured a much deeper and more compelling moments on film. One of the dominatrix workers kept referring to her job as a show, getting in costume, acting and I feel like the director could have delved deeper in how this world was like some escape for her.
The director did a good job in becoming friends with the Mistresses so they opened up to him would constantly destroy this bond by overstepping his boundaries. I feel people get some of the best footage when they push boundaries but the director just wasn’t careful when choosing questions. One example of this was when one of the girls had an argument with one of the clients, she was extremely upset and instead of letting the tape roll he starts asking questions. This isn’t a bad thing but he started off asking stupid questions. He asked her how does she feel which was completely unnecessary because you could visually see she was upset. All it accomplished was her getting disgusted with the camera and leaving.
This was a good film because it shows you what not to do.
