Let’s make one thing clear, this is not your typical movie review and this will contain spoilers. All I’m gonna say about the movie as a movie that it is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Especially for a kinkster, the humour finds its mark a bit too nicely at times and you will realize that you and your fellow kinksters are the only ones laughing. So for anyone with a sense of humour the movie is a must see, any movie critic who thinks otherwise should be asked again after getting some treatment from the movie’s Mona.
This piece will mostly focus on the kinky aspects of the movie, how it treats kinksters and what thoughts it provoked. As a movie and just on how it handles all the kinky themes it wipes the floor with the most well known counterpart, and that is even if you only take the best parts from the trilogy.
I’ll begin with Mona, who is played by the very lovely and talented Krista Kosonen. Both Kosonen and the director J-P Valkeapää have managed to create Mona as a believable professional dominatrix. The acting by Kosonen and her gestures as well as the costumes she is wearing will surely raise her on a pedestal in the kinky community. Her harshness, the way she controls her slaves/subs, the way she pets them and the sound of the leather that is caressing her body when she moves around, all of these instantly create a feeling that she is holding all the strings in these scenes like an actual professional. The cinematography in the scenes between Kosonen and Pekka Strang look absolutely stunning and it takes you right there with them. As a kinkster you want to step in the place of the character Juha (played by Strang) in those scenes. This view was shared by both males and females of our group. The camera focuses on the creaking noise of the leather on Mona, on her wig and make-up that take away some of the more human aspect of her during her side job. It focuses on her leather gloves that you just want to wrap around your neck, the collar choking the very lucky/poor Juha and on the plastic bag over pulled over his head, the bag that is very much out of air. Both Kosonen and Strang are quite intimate and in some ways feral in these scenes. Most of all they are believable in the scenes, or as believable as one can expect when it’s a movie with actors. The sessions aren’t badly acted nor are they unrealistic either, in fact they have that sense of authenticity and emotion filled desire in them. Both Kosonen and Strang are good at selling this to the audience and especially Strang’s eyes that are just empty afterwards is something most kinksters have seen many times. These moments within the movie blow you away. They make you remember your own kinky history. They make you remember that moment when you yourself had that same rush as Juha does in the movie. That moment, when you just craved for more. More of everything, that you really didn’t even know that you desired and needed, even though that spark of interest was always there.
In Mona, I saw many of my friends and former “flings”. Especially the sadistic, yet a bit surprised smile on Kosonen’s face after a fairly graphically violent scene is something I can picture on the face of a very dear friend of mine. It also reminded me why I never got enough of that person. Unlike Juha, I never uttered the words “You can hurt me as much as you want to”, yet I still saw that smile often enough. This one scene brings so much life into the character. Especially because Mona is not wearing her makeup and wig that covers some of the more humane parts of her during work time. It also shows that it’s not just a job for her, her hold on Juha and the treatment he gets still stays as savage and severe.
Like most of us, both Juha and Mona have their real life waiting for them when all of the kinkiness gets pushed aside during the day. Their double life and especially the vanilla side of it creates a contrast between the people they are in the kinky world. They are just your ordinary people, both working in healthcare during the day. Mona especially looks really cute with her knit cap on, rather than the cruelly beautiful dominatrix. Which for most of us, is how it is in real life as well. That cruel person hurting you and demeaning you is into same stupid stuff you are into, and will wear her woollen socks when it gets cold, rather than dress in leather or latex all day long. And as a professional dominatrix you are playing a role for the customer, based on their desires and your limits. That role ends when you get back into your street clothes. In other words, the movie doesn’t represent kinksters as weird people with their fetishes and desires, but as human beings with their faults, weaknesses and desires. The movie does laugh at kinksters at some points, but then again those are incidents some of us for sure have gone through. The comedy doesn’t in any point turn malicious and I think most of us have gone through that first rush when nothing else seems interesting, only what you’ve just discovered and that current will drag you down with it.
The movie does take into consideration safety in sessions and the risks involved. Most of the playing between Mona and Juha is about breathplay and strangulation, so naturally the risks are quite high. At least in my mind, the movie is quite conscious and aware of the risks involved with losing consciousness and it portrays what will happen when things go wrong and how emotionally hard that kind of risk-aware playing is for the person in control as well. Legally, the dominant is screwed if something goes wrong. Due to this you can see Mona go through those same emotions what you yourself will go through when you take playing into that very edge. While the other person just wants more and more, and trusts that they are in safe hands, even though in such session it’s impossible to guarantee that everything will go fine. So, even Mona has her limits on what she is willing to do and how far she is willing to take the breathplay. I thought this point the movie made was quite good and important.
Despite all the praise the movie does get a few things a bit wrong. First thing at least for a Finn is the club they frequent. It’s more of a hidden bar, behind a steel door and you need to pass the grumpy bouncer to get in and after whom the paradise awaits. Paradise with dancing and playing people with their lovely fetish gear. This is somewhat far away from the truth usually. But from a storytelling point of view this naturally makes sense. It shows the world of happy, shiny and playful people just waiting for Juha, as long as he can make it past the bouncer. The smile on Juha’s face at the end of the movie portrays the feeling what most of us have gone through when we have found ourselves amongst people just like us. When you can be what you are, without having to explain your desires to others. Free, accepted and self-aware. If I wasn’t a nervous wreck in my first party I’m quite sure I would have smiled as happily as Juha or maybe what I needed was the presence of Krista Kosonen or Mona.
The other thing that movie got wrong was how Mona leaves the emotionally fragile customer, who is clearly in need of some aftercare alone to cry, when in reality the people I know would never do that. Aftercare is an important part of the session for both professionals and amateurs alike, especially after a physically and emotionally draining one. Though I’m quite sure there are professionals and customers who want to have an illusion of a completely cold mistress, but usually being humane and treating the person as a human being is part of the service and session. Even more so, when money doesn’t change hands before or after.
Overall the movie leaves you with a feeling that the creators truly wanted to understand kinksters, their desires and the dynamic that goes on during playing. They have wanted to create a movie that doesn’t take the easiest route, they’ve wanted to create a somewhat realistic depiction on how someone might play and they convey the downsides of being a professional dominatrix as well as the humanity behind that role, without forgetting about the customer who has just found himself. Even though the movie does cover kinkiness and fetishes based on a traumatic experience, it still gives a relatable portrayal of Mona and Juha and it never feasts on their fetishes, but rather portrays them in a believable way. Naturally everything can’t be perfectly explained in the movie and some elements of the movie are done differently than in real life due to storytelling reasons.
The movie couldn’t win the Finnish Kinky Deed Award (Kinkytekopalkinto) this year, but in many ways the movie is what most of us have been waiting for and deserve after years of waiting. The biggest surprise is that the movie hails from Finland. The trilogy I mentioned in the very beginning mostly caused severe facepalming and embarrassment, where as Dog’s Don’t Wear Pants never drops to that level. It just kept getting better and better. The movie made you laugh at the right moments and in the right way and I highly doubt you will run into a movie that portrays kinkiness in such a good manner. So stop hesitating, grab a friend or four and go see the movie (In Finland it will hit broader circulation in November).