Watched this film via a recommendation from the Amazon lists, and found it a very strange film indeed. It is not one I can describe easily, as it both uplifted me and also brought me down at the same time.It is - almost - a love story between two damaged and incomplete people, trying to find something that can make them whole, but not knowing at the time, that they are simply running away from reality.Some stunning images, clothing, and scenes bring the story to great heights, but the ending - although what needed to happen - brought things crashing down, and left me feeling very sad for both of them. A good film overall.

I have seen other BDSM films. Some I watched out of curiosity, others to see if it'd be told or used differently. They were all the same. This film starts out from an emotional viewpoint, in my opinion. A young teenage boy named Charlie goes through some horrible incidences from the start; most likely emotionally wrecking him and finds a sort of comfort in a BDSM mistress named Maggie who has emotional issues of her own. While the BDSM does play its role this film is not really centered on it, as a whole. This film seemed to be about people going through a lot of emotional pain. I can relate to that. A mother feeling as if she's losing her son (main character), a son who wants to escape, and the BDSM mistress going through her own tribulations with her own life, and a child of her own she is apart from but wants to be nearer to and even his emotional turmoil from not being near his mother. Like the toy gun incident. From his viewpoint it probably wasn't about the gun but the fact his mother gave it to him but he wasn't allowed to keep it. There is a bit of dry humor to this film, especially during the BDSM scenes. Not that the film is necessarily making fun of what these men's sexual fantasies are but that it just comes off funny. While this does have its dry humor this is not a funny film, in the least. So emotionally wrought. Every time Maggie dominates Charlie it felt like she was losing herself more and more.The legal age issue; I saw this before in "Noksaek uija" where apparently an older woman had a sexual relationship with a young boy (he was 19), the age of consent in that country, at the time that film was released, was 13. They changed that law since then but the character in that film was obviously not 13. Much older. In Australia the age of consent is 16 yet here it seems they have a social worker talk to Charlie and he states "I'm 16!" which he knows it's legal yet films like this like to say it's not or imply it; an untruthful bias that always seems to be on their line. According to Australian law on this subject (which I read) it is only illegal for someone to have sex with a 16/17 year old who is in a "supervisory" role. Maggie, even though a Dominatrix, is not in that role, so it's perfectly legal for them to have a sexual relationship. That's the lie this film tells; and films like it. If you think it should be a higher age don't lie about it in a film, take action outside of it. Like the other film, and being a technical rater, that deducts this otherwise emotional film down a bit. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed it.

Stephen Lance wrote the story and adapted it for the screen with Gerard Lee and then directed it. It is an Australian film and is the debut for Lance and as such it is rather impressive.The subject matter of BDSM seems to be growing in popularity, certainly in book and subsequently in films. But what Lance manages to do with this microanalytic form of exploring the extremes of human emotions through the parameters of physical poles of pleasure versus pain works much better than most. Perhaps that is due to the fact that he relies less on in your face on the screen acting out of the whips and chains and torture and agony that always seem so false when attempting to make a story and instead concentrates on why these extremes of acting out represent needs and psychological holds in need of patching. It also helps immensely that he elected to cast the devastatingly beautiful and gifted actress Emmanuelle Béart in the pivotal role of the Dominatrix. She is credible. The story is as follows: It's a long hot summer for Charlie Boyd (Harrison Gilbertson). He's sixteen, his hormones are raging and he's just found out his mother (Rachel Blake) is having an affair with his father's (Hugh Parker) best friend. One thing takes his mind off his problems, the mysterious woman Maggie (Emmanuelle Béart) down the street who has visitors day and night, and has just advertised for a gardener. But she is forgotten when a tragic family event tumbles Charlie into a world of pain, a pain so intense Charlie thinks no-one can help him. He's wrong. Someone can. Maggie, the beautiful French stranger. She's a professional, and she specialises in pain. Giving it, exploring it, sharing it, all for money. So Charlie falls in love, and despite herself so does she, drawn to this troubled boy who takes all the pain she can give and uses it to heal himself. And as Charlie heals, he turns that healing back onto her, his Mistress.A talented Aussie cast adds a flavor to the film and as far as stories that address BDSM, this is one of the more successful ones. Grady Harp, May 15

This is presumably intended to be a 'significant' and 'artistic' film full of deep meanings on life, love and growing up. Its only claim to any of these is that the director made full use of longeurs where characters move very, very s l o w l y which served only to prolong an already dire experience.None of the players appear to have acted in anything before, wooden would be too kind a description. The leading boy is an unlikeable kid who shows how he is 'suffering' by writing graffiti on his widowed mother's garage. His sexy new neighbour just happens to gag and whip men in her spare time (as you do in the suburbs) and after that I lost interest.So will you.Any resemblance to real life experiences of adolescence is purely absent.