Less than a review: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023)
Is this deadpan humor -- or just dead?
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023)
Written and directed by Joanna Arnow
Joanna Arnow wrote, directed, and stars in this film, her feature-length debut after several short films done over the past decade. She plays a New York office worker with diffident relationships and attitudes with and about everything. A sexual submissive, she endures the behavior of the men she dates, politely but definitely bored with whatever they put her through. None of her lovers seem very imaginative; they spark no passion in her. Nor does her character seem to have figured out how, as a submissive, to provoke passion in her partners.
Here’s one exchange:
Him: Tell me what you like.
Her: (pause) I like when you put your hands in my mouth.
Him: I know that. What else?
Her: (long pause) Like when you told me what to do?
Him: What else?
Her: (very long pause) I like things. I just can't think of them right at the moment.
Him: Tell me what you like.
Her: I don't know. Can’t you just tell me what you want me to do?
Him: I'm telling you what to do right now and you are not doing it.
Speaking as a person who has ever dated at all, much less someone who knows anything about BDSM, I think that if I ever had a conversation like that with a lover, it would tell me that the relationship was not only doomed but had died in the distant past.
And this is a relationship she’s been in for nine years, we later find out. Ghastly.
Viewers at first might be reminded of “Secretary,” the Maggie Gyllenhaal - James Spader romcom about a woman in a submissive relationship. But that film is animated by a character who not only understands how to drive a sexual encounter from below, but is passionate enough about the relationship to save it.
Arnow’s character does try a couple of times to seek passion, or at least excitement, but finds none. Everyone in her universe is so obtuse that sex — or dinners with her parents, or work relationships — is like telling jokes to a cow.
Clearly the deadpan nature of the humor is the point, but Arnow ain’t got nothing on, say, Aubrey Plaza. Not in this movie.
Unfortunately I was only able to stay for about a third of the movie before I was called away, so I can’t be sure it goes nowhere, but there were no promising signs.