The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (now streaming on Hulu) is a hell of a title. It’s long. Evocative. Existentialist regret spills out of it. The film is the feature debut of writer, director and star Joanna Arnow, who crafts an offbeat, autofictional comedy about a 30-something New Yorker who’s reached peak life ennui. As in, what is this strange thing called joy? And that apathy has permeated every component of her life – work, family, sex – and is on full display throughout this movie, which adopts its protagonist’s squashed-flat tone and (literally physically) nakedness. It’s funny, it’s sad and it isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely from a fresh new filmmaking voice.
The Gist: We meet Ann (Arnow) while she’s naked and humping Allen’s (Scott Cohen) leg while he sleeps. “I love how you never care if I cum,” she says, breaking an awkward silence by making the moment even more awkward – for us, at least. This is how we learn that Ann is the submissive in a BDSM relationship with this older man. She’s bare-ass naked at all times in his presence, and she calls him “master.” They’ve been doing this for nine years. Ann was 24 then and she’s 33 now. Allen doesn’t even remember that she went to Wesleyan, even though he’s asked and she’s answered who knows how many times. Is this part of the bit? The kink? Or is it the truth of his insensitivity? Where’s Ann’s line between sexual fantasy and chilly reality? “Do you think people can change?”, Ann asks Allen, and his reply is, “I don’t know,” and the moment feels like the film’s thesis statement.
At work – a desk job doing whatever at a faceless corporation that does whatever – it’s just as awkward, in a meeting that’s weirdly silent, where Ann is smacked down for asking what’s perceived to be a stupid question. Later, Ann meets with her manager, who says if Ann completes the project she’s working on, “you’ll have made your own job obsolete.” Ann’s family? Irksome. They sit in awkward silence at the dinner table until Ann makes a half-assed attempt to trade banal niceties with her mother (Barbara Weiserbs), who senses the lack of effort and snipes, “You know I don’t celebrate Memorial Day!” Later, Ann’s parents will present her with a box of all her homework from middle school. She doesn’t want it. But should they just, you know, throw it away? (That’s her parents talking.) I mean, doesn’t that stuff represent the Ann that was, who used to be young and full of promise and not zombie-shuffling through life? (That’s me reading into it.)
The good thing is, Ann isn’t chained to Allen, and I’m speaking metaphorically. The bad thing is, she dates other doms, one of whom dresses her in rabbit ears and a pig snout and scrawls F— PIG on her abdomen in marker. It’s hard to tell if she’s into it. She’s pretty numb, walled-off. Would she say no if she didn’t like it? Hard to tell. Her face is in a perpetual state of blankness. But it definitely fits the deep-seated passiveness that said face expresses, in its inexpressiveness. The cycle drones on: She goes back to Allen, she watches the progress bar on her work computer creep along slowly, her parents passive-aggressively express their disappointment. Then she meets Chris (Babak Tafti), who’s a sweet guy. Goofy. Awkward in an endearing way instead of the hopeless way this movie has been drowning in for 40, maybe 50 minutes to this point. He isn’t judgy and is even open to obliging Ann’s specific turn-ons. And… is that a smile on Ann’s face? Haven’t seen that yet. Will there be more?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Arnow strikes a tone somewhere amidst Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach and Lena Dunham.
Performance Worth Watching: There’s no debating Arnow’s boldness here – or the way Tafti’s performance (which arrives at the perfect time, where we’re about to wonder if anyone in this film is likable) functions so naturally as the catalyst for Ann’s change.
Memorable Dialogue: Imagine this all being said in a manner so deflated, it’s like everyone’s been run over with a steamroller:
Ann’s mother: I love you so. Much.
Ann: I love you too.
Ann’s mother: You say that so perfunctorily.
Ann’s father (David Arnow): You say that like you’re holding your nose.
Sex and Skin: Multiple scenes of frank graphic nudity, masturbation, oral sex and Arnow wearing a mortifying peekaboo outfit complete with ball gag and pig nose. I don’t know if any of it is “sexy” in the traditional movie sense, but it feels realistic at least.
Our Take: It makes sense that Arnow has also composed comic strips – The Feeling… often has a single-panel pace and visual method to it, with lengthy takes and static cameras. The narrative progresses like a series of vignettes, with no clear and obvious nod to the passage of time. And Ann’s flattened manner of speaking and presenting herself is purposeful and, one might say, emulates the one-dimensional quality of line drawings. Which isn’t to say Ann and her experiences lack depth; the silence and pauses and minimal editing give us room to read, examine and interpret, even if we merely sense the invisible emotional barriers Ann has built around herself.. Arnow also strips the narrative of anything within three postal codes of histrionics, so it flows more like real life – even subtly deadpan-stylized as the film can be – and less like a traditional movie.
For a while, I didn’t know what to make of this film, of Ann’s seemingly joyless existence, of its comedy, which is rarely light and easy, and frequently painful. (Don’t call it “cringe”; it’s insightful, not shocking. Also, I laughed a lot, most likely to break the tension.) Eventually, I sensed Ann’s understated, uneven, incremental, and perhaps unwitting quest for wholeness as a person, and her sense of agency within her sexuality. There’s no kink-shaming here; even in Ann’s most humiliating moments, we never sense that she’s not in control. A theme also seemed to coalesce in the final scene, which underscores the cyclical nature of our actions, and suggests that cycles don’t always need to be broken, but perhaps subverted little by little until they wobble in our favor.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Fascinating movie. Funny, way off-kilter, for fans of the deadest of deadpans. I feel like if I watched it again, it’d be a whole new experience. That’s a rare thing.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.