My Mistress

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

Locked down due to coronavirus & this popped up on free TV. Yes there's still free TV.

Considering the quality of this movie? the makers should pay the viewer.

I'd imagine Rachel Blake was doing someone a favour to appear in this trash. I thought Emmanuel was a cross dresser. As for the kid............

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 watched the trailer and i was compelled to watch this film immediately, the kind of story, and above all the presence of the beautiful Emmanuelle Béart, of witch a'm a fan from back in the 80's.

But i was disappointed from almost the beginning of the movie, the story is a mess, between a confused adolescent, a confused middle-aged-BDSM-woman, a cheating-with-your-best-friend, and all together make this mess, that the director and witter, didn't know how to solve.

Is it so difficult to tell a story ? beginning, middle part and ending, with some kind of sense ?

What Stephen Lance (i know it's his first major film) did was just a mesh-up of situations and none of them make a connection, and when you wait for 1h35min for some kind of explanations, BANG !!!!, nothing.

Lovely Emmanuelle Béart, you should of stayed in France, and skipped this film.

The 3 out of 10 is almost all to you.

From the cover and trailer I was expecting a lot more, but the movie fell short. There's very little BDSM shown, most of it is implied, there's next to no story and the movie isn't very believable.

Charlie who is sixteen, is going through a rough patch. He's angry and hurting. He doesn't want to feel his pain. So he fixates on a woman who seems to be a Dominatrix. Maggie is having a rough go at life and needs to control something. So she leans into her job as a Mistress.

The film is easily on the lower end of movies. Could be considered a C movie. The filming is horrible, with the camera that shakes and the odd angles. It honestly feels like something a student decided to make. But I was hoping where it lacked in quality it would make up in some R rated BDSM content. It does not. There are very few scenes of Maggie being a Domintrix. There's no sex scenes at all, other then one that is about to happen, showing a little nudity and then they cut the scene.

Harrison Gilbertson who played Charlie did a great job. He was cute with a little bit of bad boy and you wanted to see him get dominated. But Emmamuelle Beart who plays Maggie was the wrong actress. First off her appearance, she looks like someone who's had a rough life, who has been a hooker for many years. And she did not have the presence of a hardened Mistress. She came off as someone you could push around with ease. She felt like a broken person. Not a strong person.

The plot makes no sense. If someone broke into your house, the home you conduct paid sexual activity, you would not invite them to come back, and work for you. Multiple times Charlie stalks Maggie and he breaks into her home. And yet she is perfectly fine with it? Who wrote this? So much of the storyline makes no sense. And it would have been fine to have a bad story if it would of made up with the sexual content. But it doesn't. Instead it barely shows anything.

The only enjoyable part of the film is the slow relationship that builds between Maggie and Charlie. And surprisingly the ending is half decent.