Regra 34

This film was presented at this year's NewFest as "an intriguing investigation of racial, class, gender, and sexual power dynamics." What it really is is a deeply dangerous, exploitative masterclass on how NOT to foster representation in cinema.

The film's premise is sophomoric and laughably unrealistic even by B-Movie standards: A young sophisticated Black woman, Simone, is lawyer volunteer to battered women by day, and sex cam BDSM performer (and budding orgy enthusiast) by night. If you can get past that (insulting) narrative implausibility that any woman would put such hardwon success at such needless risk, the film itself is a bland event. It's an artless film, stylistically stale, and narratively weak. The camera remains fixed throughout, for a TV aesthetic. The acting is rigid and unconvincing. Presented more as random vignettes than as a genuine developed narrative, it desperately hopes to be transgressive but collapses under the burden of its pretenses and is ultimately guilty of participating in the very power structures it wants to condemn.

I'm a Black Brazilian woman (now expat), just a bit older than the film's protagonist. I'm supposedly who the film purports to depict. But this film has nothing to do with those who it speaks on behalf of. Of course, with any political or social discourse, it's always intention that matters most. And it's the film's intention that is poisoned. One reviewer described the film as "more sinister than disturbing" and that is apt.

The film's director described, without the slightest irony, that her impetus for the film was to make a film about sexuality and that she initially sought to confront her bias about pornography, as her partner in real life was enthusiastic about it and she was not. She initially wrote a script that did not include the discourses on race and class and that did not even include a lead character of color. Later, as the BLM and MeToo movements became fashionable, her writing partner suggested the protagonist "needed to be Black." In essence, four white writers came together to stitch on social discourse to their film *after the fact*, making Black pain a narrative prop or accessory to their story. That is the polite way to say it. The more accurate way is to say that four white writers (two of them men), were colonizing Black women's trauma for their own artistic gain for what, in the end, amounts to a thinly disguised, vainly self-indulgent sexual snuff film.

The political insights are stiff and didactic and forced in through actual academic lectures and utterly unnatural exchanges by the film's actors. In one scene, the protagonist says to a BDSM-engaged friend: "You can hold an exhibition of me tied up to reiterate all the historical images that are attached to my body." It's necessary to remember these are words being forced into a Black woman's mouth by four white filmmakers. The very existence of this film is the epitome of White entitlement, that any White filmmakers would think it their province to speak on the part of those they've oppressed and in this flippant manner. Just as the much-discussed "mansplaining" in culture these years, there is such a thing as "White-splaining." There is such a thing as parasitic, exploitative empathy. And RULE 34 is a totem to it.

Black people around the world do not need what has been done to them by White people explained to them by White people. The point of all the recent social revelations of these past years is that it is time for our (diverse) voices to be returned to us, to be invited to tell our authentic stories. Not for White voices to speak on our behalf, and in this case, to speak over our voices. Films like this are regressive and deeply dangerous. And more than outrage, I just feel deep pain that White filmmakers fantasizing Black trauma could ever be confused as something progressive. It takes a lot of people to make a film like this. Not one of them thought it might it might be deeply offensive to make a toy of hypotheticals like: "What if a woman driven to defend abused women was actually kinda into it, and secretly aroused by sexual violence in private?" Or to depict a Black Woman as complicit and even enthusiastic in her own self-destruction. Not one of them? And what of all the film festivals or film partners who might enable such false equivalences that the film plays with? Do you really need to have it explained to you that Black oppression and BDSM are not acceptable metaphoric dualities? Not one of you saw how insanely distasteful, socially tone deaf and predatory films like this are? How they counterfeit social outrage for the sole benefit of their makers? Has so little really changed in these recent years, after a worldwide discourse?

Who does it benefit to watch a Black Woman in distress for two hours? This is the question. Those who the film pretends to defend or speak on behalf of? Black women, Black people, women in dangerous situations, people at the mercy of oppressive cultures? How much of the money the film might reap have the film's director, Julia Murat, and its producers committed to the causes the film depicts? If the answer is none, that is the very definition of exploitation. The film is then only vehicle to further the ambitions of White folks at the expense of Black folks.

Please don't let us be insulted this way or used this way. Please have the decency to be outraged. And I would say to those who genuinely seek to be our allies: can you quiet your voices long enough to hear our voices? To let us tell our stories? To let us tell our TRUTH? Your privilege can be accomplice to our real liberation...but not like this, not like this film.

I find it hard to ignore obscure world cinema titles that generate a buzz by winning the top award at renowned festivals, such as at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival. It's also been a long while since I last saw a Brazilian movie, making this one ripe for my watchlist.

In case you're wondering, the title "Rule 34" refers to an Internet meme that states "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." How this specifically factors into the movie is ponderous though.

Right from the first frame, Rule 34 is sexually provocative and (somewhat) explicit. Director Júlia Murat has carefully selected a black, bisexual protagonist and we follow her journey as she experiences asphyxiation, BDSM, interracial threesomes, and more for the first time.

There is a political-laden subtext, which includes racism, colonialism, and toxic (possibly even heteronormative) patriarchalism for example. This allows Rule 34 to level up somewhat and set itself aside from similar movies that deep dive into the world of adult entertainment and sexual discovery.

Saying that, Rule 34 isn't for everyone. Especially the scenes of asphyxiation look particularly unnerving, since those types of imagery have mostly been reserved for horror movies until now and have rarely been sexualized onscreen.

Rule 34 is a solid movie and ticks all of the boundary-pushing boxes that I love about independent world cinema.

No pun intended - we as humans are complex. We can be for one thing or be active in a job and do things differently in our private life. Rich people allegedly (some) like to be humiliated in "real" life (as in privately). You hear stories about that stuff - so someone who is out there prosecuting people for one thing ... may be doing or yearning for that thing - I can't or rather won't go into details.

Let's just be clear about this: the movie is quite visceral and almost explicit in a way (depending on your sensibilities) ... so you can't be too sensitive about the stuff that the movie is showing ... and you can't be prudish to say the least ... this has a lot of nudity ... not sure it will excite people or rather it may sound ... well titilating and it really is not that much, if at all ... so be aware of that ... this is a drama ... and not really the best ...