In the opening moments of The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed, Ann (Joanna Arnow) asks her longtime casual BDSM sex partner—an older, sexually dominant man named Allen (Scott Cohen)—if he thinks that people can change. It’s a question that sets the thematic stage for the film, though not through a traditional hero’s journey – instead, the film is staged through introspective, naturalistic, and funny pseudo-vignettes. Ann maintains ebbing and flowing relationships with her parents, her sister, her work, and a collection of sexual partners, with most of her changes blooming from fluctuating interior emotions.
We have certainly seen art about millennial women moving through life, love, and career in modern New York City before. And yet The Feeling… feels fresh. Much of this, at least for me, can be attributed to the film’s presentation of Ann’s sexuality.
Arnow’s auto fictional protagonist, Ann, is awkward and dry, but importantly, she’s also refreshingly totally disinterested in pathologizing her sexual proclivities. Both Ann and The Feeling… itself present Ann’s submissive sexual tendencies as a positive and neutrally existing part of her life — an activity that can be casual, intimate, titillating, silly, and even sometimes boring. While I loved The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed as a whole, its representations of Ann’s sex life was what drew me back for a second screening when I saw the film at TIFF. I was delighted by the film’s capacity to capture a specific duality of sex — particularly sex that plays in power dynamic and fantasy. The Feeling… captures the weighty sensation felt by those involved in sexual play while also acknowledging how deeply funny, ridiculous, and muted that same sex can look from an outside perspective.
I recently spoke with Arnow about her film, its deeply funny and lived-in representations of kink and sexuality, and how she created the sensation of an ebb and flow in Ann’s constantly changing interiority.
VP: I’d love to start by talking about the kink and BDSM in this film. I know that you’ve described this film before as autofictional. Was this specific aspect of Ann’s life always going to be a central point of the film?
JA: I think it was always going to be, in some ways, an exploration of this character’s sexuality and relationships,which includes relationships with BDSM as well as her family and daily life. I think BDSM and kink were a part of the fabric of the film from the beginning.
VP: I found it so interesting that one of Ann’s big fantasies, which she talks about specifically in the opening scene with Allen (Scott Cohen), is that her dom “uses her”. Then this is paired—to me comedically—with this ongoing thread at her job where her employers are telling her if she’s doing her work right, she will eventually be “rendered obsolete”, or no longer be of any use there. Do you have any thoughts on the film’s contrast of her material, day-to-day life power dynamics versus the way they play out in the form of her BDSM fantasies?
JA: I wanted to show how the entirety of this character’s experience informs who she is, and that there’s these ideas in all of the threads, ranging from personal relationships to work, that include navigating communication, relationships, and power dynamics. Sometimes I wanted to draw comparison between these threads, and sometimes I wanted to draw contrast.
As for her fantasy of being used, I just want to clarify that I don’t see that storyline [between Ann and Allen] as anyone being actually used. It’s a very consensual scene play that occurs between the characters. Sometimes there’s a misunderstanding about that.
VP: This misunderstanding you’re talking about is actually the center of one of my next questions. When I saw your film at TIFF, there were a few questions at the Q&A regarding Ann’s sex life and her tendency to end up with “mean people”, which I feel is a pretty big misunderstanding of the film’s presentation of consensual BDSM. Did you anticipate having to walk people through the basic tenets of BDSM as part of talking about this movie?
JA: I think that unfortunately in this day and age, people really don’t want to see women expressing sexuality as having agency. So yes, I imagined that I would have to explain what BDSM means throughout the process and in interviews. People tend to want to pathologize or question if this character likes herself, or why she would want to do these things. I see BDSM—and any sort of consensual and safe sexual activity—as a healthy form of self-expression, that any kind of person should be able to pursue. I guess I expected some of that, but the judgment and inability of some viewers to accept the sexual activity and BDSM on its own terms can be tricky to manage.
VP: I really love that a lot of the shifts in this film have to do with Ann’s interior state of mind and emotional ebb and flow, but without constant explicit narration on her part. How did you go about creating and representing the shifts in Ann’s interiority without requiring an external narrativization?
JA: I was interested in creating a film that authentically reflected the ebb and flow of the main character’s life, and gave insight into a very subjective experience of time passing. Time is kind of interconnected to the emotional temperature of the relationships the protagonist is having.
I wanted to subvert that classic hero’s journey, and for the change in this film to be much smaller and more jagged than usual. I feel like in mainstream films, people are constantly signposting their emotional state, and I don’t see that as true to life. I wanted to use editing and comedy to create rhythms that would keep people engaged with the story instead of it having some of those traditional narrative signposts.
VP: I was really struck by the choreography and physical blocking at certain moments in the film, whether it be in a BDSM scene, in aftercare, or even in the way she connects with her work friends. What was the choreography process like for you?
JA: The choreography was pretty specific. In the “run to the wall” scene, we were searching for a location for a long time that would have enough space for the blocking. It was important to me that the characters of Ann and Allen were the same distance from the camera, to emphasize the comedy of the repetition and the running happening on the same plane.
I think having some of these absurdly comical sex scenes in long takes and long shots gave space for context and comedy of the situation, and give space for the audience to take in all the details, even if it’s just the difficulty of trying to quickly and gracefully get off a bed when you’re naked.
VP: I love the way this film represents sexuality and kink as something that can be so weighty for the person in the moment, but can look sort of ridiculous to an outside perspective. How did you go about selecting what was going to have the effect of being valuable and sexy and important to these characters, but would maybe appear funny to the audience in turn?
JA: I feel like so much of sex and sexuality can be funny when you step back a little bit. The vulnerability of trying something new, figuring something out, the way that bodies move in a space all seems like pretty rich comic material to me. I think including things like a sneeze [while giving head] or extremely naturalistic dialogue was part of the goal, because I wanted to portray all these scenes with a comedic lens, but also a less sensational lens, because I think it all just feels more human that way.
VP: I wanted to talk a little bit about the different forms of relationships and spaces that Ann has in her life. I really love that there’s this surprising and sweet friendship arc with a coworker at her corporate job. What are your thoughts on the way that Ann’s work takes up a portion of her life as meaningfully as her family and her sister and her sex life?
JA: I liked exploring these in-between spaces in some ways. For example, with Ann’s relationship with the Allen character; in some ways they don’t have a conventional relationship and it’s casual, but what happens when they eat together, and what intimacy is created in that moment? And conversely, I was also interested in the work environment. It’s pretty barren and absurd, but I feel like there are still moments of sweetness and life in there. I’m not coming out as pro-corporate job, but I felt like it was a sort of plant growing through the cement kind of situation.
VP: At moments in the film we get information about Ann that isn’t necessarily reflected onscreen. At one moment Allen accuses her of talking too much, but we see her onscreen as a really conscientious person who’s not that talkative. It gives the sensation that even though we’re seeing her day-to-day life, we can’t ever really see her full personhood. What was your process in deciding what was most important to show about her versus what may surprise us to learn about how others see her?
JA: I wanted to explore the idea that we’re all more than one person in a way. When you have a character arc that starts at Point A and ends so clearly at Point B in conventional films, it collapses people. They’re very consistent across their arc, and they respond in consistent ways. But I feel like we change so much depending on who we sit opposite. Part of my interest in doing a full character exploration in this film was about just exploring the ways we diverge depending on who we’re with and our relationship with them.
#Interview #Feeling #Time #Passed #Director #Joanna #Arnow
