Less than a review: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023)

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.