Thomas, a young gay black man is an erotic artist by profession. He lives with his boyfriend Amadi but secretly explores his sexual fantasies by hooking up with guys through apps. He is fascinated by role play and BDSM but never gets to explore that with Amadi. One night at a gallery opening, he meets a white man named Lee who enjoys DBSM, and he soon becomes enmeshed in a racially-charged relationship that threatens to push his boundaries further than ever before. Meanwhile, Thomas’ white friend and fellow artist, Jackson, uses his work to explore his own interracial fetishes, with equally disturbing results. Lee essentially kidnaps Thomas, imprisons him in a cage and subjugates, as well as tortures him, eventually putting him chains and compelling him to work for him with chores and obviously sex. The weird twist here is that Thomas stops fighting and perhaps likes the subjugation or possibly starts to develop feelings for his captor in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.
I am really not sure the point the film was trying to make. I read that it was essentially about sexual identity of black men intertwined with their history, religion and community and how it all fits in. Lee is a racist, sexual predator and most likely a psychopath with a slave fetish. But then why is Thomas eventually falling of him. The guy has no regret to essentially chain and almost rape Thomas day in and out. Talking of Thomas, there's no examination of why Thomas is attracted to particularly this kind of racist role play and even why he goes along with the eventual, forced seduction and subservient position. And then the whole parallel story of this other guy Jackson and his possible fetish with black men and wanting to exploit them for his art project, which includes capturing them having a sex act on camera; is just not explored. I understand that the fetishizing and exploitation of the black body is a theme that is at the core of what is happening between Thomas and Lee, but Jackson's story feels detached from what's happening to Thomas and doesn't deep dive as I would have expected it to be as an audience. There is no solution presented but just a story is presented without trying to make a statement and I don't appreciate that. The film is slow, full of unnecessary sex scenes and feels like more of a badly made wanna film that address the very potent question surrounding racism in gay culture. For those advocating seeing this film as a means of understanding the contemporary gay scene i can only say that this is nonsense. The fetish portrayed here is an extremely minority one and would repel the vast majority of people on the scene or not. (2.5/10)
Comments