I LIKE TO PLAY GAMES - VHS

Description: "As I’ve dug into the world of erotic thrillers and dramas I haven’t seen many films exploring kink and the headspace it creates or the people that thrive in kink. Sure, I’ve seen a few films that will affect the trappings of kink but nothing meaningful. Yes, once we get out of the DTV space we get films like Secretary, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants and Cronenberg’s Crash but because the DTV films were trying to cater as wide a crowd as possible in a rental environment kinky stories were unlikely. So enters I Like To Play Games and my heart swoons! These characters y’all. These characters! Ken Steadman plays Michael and when we meet him he’s being intimate with his girlfriend Melody. He stops kissing her and asks for her to show him that she needs him. Confused, Melody asks how and Michael leaves. He’s frustrated that her response isn’t instinctive. This is a case of semantics mattering. Michael wants her to need him, literally. He’s hoping for a response as instinctive as shivering when cold. He doesn’t get it because she wants him. She doesn’t need him. When we see Michael at work we see a job that’s narratively perfect for him. He’s an advertising creative. New to his office is Suzanne played by Lisa Boyle, a recent transfer from the New York office. His need for her is intense and consuming. When they begin to get romantically and sexually entangled she establishes that she is indisputably in control and that to her each of their encounters are “games.” So here’s what’s captivating to me about this. At this point Suzanne is the real world definition of a bad Domme but that’s part of what’s intoxicating about her. New subs like Michael invariably get hooked up with a bad Domme, one that doesn’t explain informed consent or define boundaries. But that’s part of the fantasy of the film. Subs want to give themselves over to a Domme without defining the boundaries and the rules. They want to be swept away in the romance of it, knowing they’ll be safe. Michael and Suzanne are engaged in escalating kink scenes. Some involve leaving him tied up for hours, some are games of public embarrassment and there’s even a little topping from the bottom. And through it all Michael, a person whose job is to cultivate a sense of need in a buying public and to manufacture desire is as lost and instinctive as he wanted Melody to be in the opening. The stakes continue to escalate as Michael loses more and more of himself to his need for Suzanne. Eventually he’s arrested for indecent exposure, frays a friendship and ultimately loses his job. At this point the film leads the viewer to believe that Michael is going to transgress, doing something ugly and awful. Then, he doesn’t. Instead of endangering Suzanne he plays a “game” with her which is tense but never really dangerous. The next night she does the same to him. Friends, I found the exuberant, playful and sexy ending to be every bit as satisfying as that bug on the blanket at the end of Secretary. This is my first film with Lisa Boyle and her performance is commanding and dynamic. The energy she shares with Ken Steadman is exciting, tense and cute. Steadman gives us so much interiority to his performance. God, dude had eyes like Paul Newman and he used them here. I did read after watching that he tragically died the year this was made in a preventable accident while working on the show Sliders. He had so much talent and his work with Lisa Boyle here was terrific. A surprising a delightful little kink inflected dramedy that’s easy to recommend." -Brian Cartwright, Letterboxd

Price: 12 USD

Location: Seattle, Washington

End Time: 2024-12-28T06:44:52.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5 USD