First seen at the Toronto Film Festival in 2022, this riveting two-hander takes place over a single night in a high-end hotel room, and I was hooked from the first scene. The very rich but very tortured Hal (Christopher Abbott with his soulful brown eyes) opens the door to his longtime dominatrix Rebecca (a luminous Margaret Qualley), whom he has paid to act out his carefully scripted roleplay game. They do not have sex, it’s all mind game, and even when the game on this particular night ends, it doesn’t end. Because, you see, Hal is about to ascend his father’s corporate throne, and he feels he needs to tell Rebecca goodbye. But Rebeccas has become attached to their dynamic and sees no reason for the game to end. With a sharply written script that never lets you rest in certainty about what you are watching, the movie twists and turns its way through an intimate thriller in which each of these two characters vie for power. The wily director Zachary Wigon keeps the camera tight on the electrically charged faces of these two compelling actors, making it impossible to look away as they expose their raw motivations and gloriously deviant souls to each other. Never have I seen the psychology of power exchange so richly portrayed, nor the essential question of it so openly explored. Is D/s in essence a roleplay game or is it, as Rebeccas contends, “the most real” part of their lives? I was on the edge of my seat, fully entranced, all the way to the surprising final line and triumphant resolution (which literally made me applaud there on my couch). I consider it the best BDSM “romance” since Secretary.
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