Surrender is an early film by noted WLW filmmaker Katherine Brooks. Brooks also directed Loving Annabelle. I didn’t like Loving Annabelle but man, Surrender makes me appreciate how much Brooks has grown as a director.
Surrender is about small town Southern girl, Georgia who comes to L.A. Wide-eyed and innocent, she is the opposite of her cynical, gothic roommate Salene. Also, Salene works as a dominatrix. Despite their initial differences and Saline’s early dislike, the two women embark on a relationship.
So, Surrender has no budget. And I want to say that’s fine. Budget does not equate talent nor does lack of budget suggest no talent. But damn, Surrender can be a difficult movie to sit through because it does lack the monetary means to polish it up for audience consumption. The camera work is exact inverse of high definition. The sound quality is worse still. Again, all of this is something that’s outside of Katherine Brooks’ control. She was an unknown in 2003 and her movie is about a lesbian dominatrix. It’s certainly understandable that Surrender would have a minuscule budget. But are the story and character good enough to make up for its low-budget visuals?
No. The story isn’t that good. Overall, It feels unfinished. Surrender almost entirely lacks a third act. I do wonder if maybe this too was a problem with money; maybe they ran out and couldn’t film a proper ending. Regardless of why it happened though, that’s what happened. The movie feels like it builds to nothing, goes nowhere and then just sort of ends.
And then there’s Salene. Salene is played by Brooks herself is exceedingly unlikable. Her brand of BDSM is very much about humiliation. We see her call her clients slave and garbage and take pleasure in beating them. That’s all fine but this uncaring, rough attitude goes beyond her sessions as a dominatrix. Upon first introduction to Georgia, she’s just immediately unpleasant for no reason. She continues like this for the first act with the added aspect of sexual harassment. She’ll say or do very provocative things to Georgia which I understand is supposed to be a sexy, dominating thing that Georgia’s into. But it doesn’t translate so it just looks like awkward sexual harassment. The only clue we have that Georgia likes this is that the two women do end up together.
I’m not an expert but I don’t think Surrender is the best depiction of BDSM. It really focuses only on the pain and humiliation aspects. It’s that sort of view of BDSM that you’d get from some procedural cop show made for normies. Lot of sexy ladies in leather beating the shit out of sad, middle-aged men. Also, not all of the actors they got to do the BDSM scenes properly committed to it. One of the most uncomfortable things to see is someone half-assing a BDSM scene.
The best part of the movie are the lesbian sex scenes. While the camera remains cheap and the sound quality iffy, these are scenes that seem to have been a real priority for Brooks. They are head and shoulders above any other scenes in this movie. There’s an artistry to the cinematography and shots. They have a mood to them and they are pretty sexy. These scenes really seem to be meticulously planned out. So that’s good and all and these scenes work, but why does it seem like the only thing that was story boarded in this whole movie was the lesbian sex scenes? I question that priority.
I don’t want to put Surrender on my bottom ten WLW films list but I think I have to. Really, I tried to see past how low-budget and amateur the film making was. I tried to give the film the benefit of the doubt. But while Brooks does show some early promise as a director, that doesn’t make Surrender a good piece of work. One of the main characters is dislikable, the plot feels half-assed and the movie just ends suddenly. And damn, the sound in this thing is bad. So while I understand some of the reasons Surrender wasn’t up to par (most of those reasons being money), at the end of the day it still ends up with Surrender not being a good movie.
Overall rating: 2.0/10
Other WLW films in similar genres
Be First to Comment