Although it's never entirely clear what the film's perspective on BDSM actually is, it appears to be positioning it as a potential coping mechanism for living with an atomised, impersonal and disempowered contemporary work environment. Whilst it might superficially seem as if Ann is merely re-creating her workplace humiliation and lack of control in her personal time, her role after hours is paradoxically empowering for reasons that escape the bounds of this review. (Speaking of 'personal' time, however, one near-inescapable element of modern work that the film neglects is the requirement you are contactable at all hours.) But whether BDSM is 'healthy' or not is not the chief concern of this film. Rather, the question for our protagonist is that, after it seemingly 'working' for nine or so years, is it still effective?
Bringing to mind a bone-dry adult comic strip pitched somewhere between Girlfriends and Napoleon Dynamite, the marked pauses between each line delivery give the film a wonderfully stilted effect. Given these spaces, however, its therefore ironic that the film doesn't give the characters enough room to breathe. We see what might happen if Ann really lets loose when she is with a man who doesn't wish to dominate her — she humiliates herself by butchering sentimental Broadway showtunes. I'd have liked to have seen some more into her deeper paradoxes and complications, notwithstanding the philosophical eternal recurrence implied by the final scene.
Still, I've probably spent somewhere between 6 and 8 weeks of my life in New York over the course of my life and, if you discount all of the sex scenes, this is the closest cinematic I've seen to an accurate depiction of what being in "the greatest city in the world" is actually like.
A mosaic-style comedy following the life of a woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family.