S&M Sally is the third in Michelle Ehlen’s Butch Jamie trilogy. I critiqued the second entry for showing no growth. When I saw that the third entry dealt with BDSM, I was concerned. BDSM comedies tend to be quite awful. To my delight, S&M Sally is the strongest of Ehlen’s film trilogy. It also crosses the low bar of being one of the better BDSM comedies I’ve seen.
Jamie and her girlfriend, Jill live together. All seems normal and perhaps, a touch stale. Until Jill proposes they engage in some wax play. The next morning, Jill casually mentions that she was engaged in the BDSM scene before dating Jamie. Insecure, Jamie pushes that as a couple, they should go to the local BDSM club. But engaging with BDSM power dynamics opens up a lot more insecurities for Jamie. She’s uncomfortable playing the role as sub, or letting Jill top her. Jill successfully realizes that a level of her discomfort can be used within the scenes and despite Jamie’s awkwardness, they explore BDSM in their relationship. In the B-plot, two of Jamie’s friends who hate each other are dating the same man. They compete with each other to look cooler and more sexually open which culminates in a good old game of bisexual threesome chicken.
There’s little continuity from the previous two films in the trilogy. Other than Jamie herself, characters have been remoulded to fit into this specific story. Most notably is Jamie’s girlfriend, Jill. In this movie, she used to moonlight as a dominatrix. This is a major departure from her previous character. Am I really calling out this low budget LGBTQ* series for this? No. Especially because this is a better iteration of the character anyways. Jill’s previous iteration was a woman who claimed to be straight and was repressing homosexual feelings for Jamie. That was sort of the sum total of her existence. In S&M Sally, it’s fair to say that a good chunk of her character is now just her interest in BDSM. But that still feels like growth. Also, it allows this version of Jill to be a way better romantic partner who communicates and stuff.
Communication was one of my big concerns with S&M Sally. A lot of comedy goes the route someone doing BDSM stuff they don’t enjoy because of poor communication. While there’s an element of that here, S&M Sally largely side-stepped my concerns. Yeah, Jamie throws herself in the BDSM deep end before she’s ready. But we see is Jill play along with her false bravado only until a point. Then, Jill will open a line of communication before anyone does something they’ll regret. Sure, they should’ve talked these details out before they hit the BDSM club. But this actually shows the importance of communication before getting involved with these situations at all. Plus, this is a comedy. So, nobody has serious regrets. Jill is always good at walking the line of pushing Jamie when she needs it, but also pulling back before it goes too far.
In general, S&M Sally stands above lots of BDSM comedies because it does seem to be made or at least consulted on by people within the community. Lots of comedies about this subject come in from the outside with little knowledge and lots of judgment. That’s not the case here. And that does also mean the BDSM goes beyond the entry-level of whips, corsets and maybe some spanking. There’s fireplay, needeplay and other more extreme elements here. And through all of it, what really works is that the joke isn’t the BDSM community itself. The joke is primarily Jamie’s response to it. Jamie’s response to discomfort and really, the whole idea of a BDSM scene is to turn it into a bit. She puts on an absurd character and says bad punchlines due to awkwardness. That’s way funnier than ooh, look at the weird sex people who like latex.
S&M Sally is also really interesting because of how it explores gender within this BDSM framework. The film delves into how one’s identity is affected by being submissive. For Jamie, her masculinity is important to her. And she conflates that with some of her sexual preferences. It’s interesting to see that for Jamie, who uses she/her pronouns, being feminized is something that’s humiliating. But she learns this can also be fun. It’s also good to see that between this plot and the film’s B-plot, there’s a lot of talk of deconstructing gender, gender roles and all that. I’m particularly thankful for all of this given some of the transphobic talk from Butch Jamie. I’m glad to see that those jokes were more an ignorant product of its time and that in the 7 years since that movie, those positions haven’t held for Ehlen or her films.
There is still an amateur quality to S&M Sally, especially in the direction. More than the film having a handheld aesthetic, there is an issue with visual timing of jokes. Luckily, the script and performances are strong enough that this is still overall, a funny movie. S&M Sally does benefit from low expectations. It’s better than the two previous entries in the trilogy. And the LGBT BDSM comedy element makes me compare it to Mango Kiss, which was god awful. So while in the grand scheme of all movies, maybe S&M Sally isn’t an all-time great, it’s still a pretty solid feature that is funny, knowledgeable about BDSM and shows continued growth from creator, Michelle Ehlen.
Overall rating: 5.8/10
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