My Mistress (2014) Poster

(2014)

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5/10
My Mediocre Mistress
twilliams765 April 2015
In this Australian coming-of-age film, 16-year-old Charlie Boyd (Harrison Gilbertson - Need for Speed) happens on a family tragedy which profoundly affects his relationship with his mother. Unable to relate to her and appearing to be a bit of a loner with few friends, Charlie finds himself curiously drawn to a new woman in town (Emmamuelle Beart - 8 Women) whose beauty captivates him ... although it also appears to capture the attention of several men as she has men entering and leaving her home at all hours of the day and night.

After breaking onto her grounds one afternoon, Charlie discovers Maggie (Beart) with a male client in a rather compromising situation. Charlie learns that Maggie is a dominatrix (for the right price) and he longs to be near her so much he begs her to hire him as her garden/pool boy ... which she reluctantly agrees to do.

The pairing of the two characters in this film is oddly uncomfortable as there is a stigma stateside involving sexual relations (of any kind) with anybody below the age of consent. As Australia's age of consent is 16, this is a societal difference some won't accept but it does make a difference when viewing the movie.

Beart is a strikingly beautiful woman and she is rather believable here as a secretive woman who is as fragile as she is strong. Her wounded soul is believable and I understood her character's frustration, anger and misery. Gilbertson is fine here although he doesn't have to do quite as much as Beart. He portrays a quiet, seething anger rather convincingly and his seeming inability to fully grasp the film's content might be intentional ... as he is still so young himself.

The film is very tame ... one shouldn't be worried about anything that may or may not be shown on screen. The two need what is inside the other person ... so there is no bared flesh in this BDSM film like Fifty Shades of Grey (it has even fewer risqué sequences than R100).

My Mistress has a decent story about two people at its center, it just isn't overly well-developed. I'd have liked a little more of these two emotionally bonding ... I felt like I/it needed more.
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1/10
Not an S&M / bondage movie
diangrev28 June 2015
Warning: Spoilers
The poster and trailer want to make you think that this is a vividly sexy movie, about a french dominatrix and a teenage boy, full of yearning, desire and a little spanking.

It's not.

It's a run-of-the-mill drama about *spoilers* a boy who has lost his dad, and a woman who has lost custody of her son. Yes, you can see where this is going. Two out of two horrible mothers, the movie is co-written by four men. Make of that what you will.

All the scenes of (very, very) mild sexual interest are in the trailer, extended by a few seconds in the movie. The way they are written suggests someone with a passing interest in S&M, there's nothing you wouldn't find on the wikipedia page for "bondage".

If you're after a barely-watchable coming-of-age drama with a few shots of stockings and stilettos, this is your movie. But don't buy into what the trailer is trying to sell you or you'll be disappointed.
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7/10
We are all damaged in some way .......
paulrees-777406 May 2018
Watched this film via a recommendation from the Amazon lists, and found it a very strange film indeed. It is not one I can describe easily, as it both uplifted me and also brought me down at the same time.

It is - almost - a love story between two damaged and incomplete people, trying to find something that can make them whole, but not knowing at the time, that they are simply running away from reality.

Some stunning images, clothing, and scenes bring the story to great heights, but the ending - although what needed to happen - brought things crashing down, and left me feeling very sad for both of them. A good film overall.
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3/10
What a mess
Luis_Felicio22 March 2015
I watched the trailer and i was compelled to watch this film immediately, the kind of story, and above all the presence of the beautiful Emmanuelle Béart, of witch a'm a fan from back in the 80's.

But i was disappointed from almost the beginning of the movie, the story is a mess, between a confused adolescent, a confused middle-aged-BDSM-woman, a cheating-with-your-best-friend, and all together make this mess, that the director and witter, didn't know how to solve.

Is it so difficult to tell a story ? beginning, middle part and ending, with some kind of sense ?

What Stephen Lance (i know it's his first major film) did was just a mesh-up of situations and none of them make a connection, and when you wait for 1h35min for some kind of explanations, BANG !!!!, nothing.

Lovely Emmanuelle Béart, you should of stayed in France, and skipped this film.

The 3 out of 10 is almost all to you.
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Certainly not a cure for anything
beattygallery-1279329 March 2020
Locked down due to coronavirus & this popped up on free TV. Yes there's still free TV.

Considering the quality of this movie? the makers should pay the viewer.

I'd imagine Rachel Blake was doing someone a favour to appear in this trash. I thought Emmanuel was a cross dresser. As for the kid............
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7/10
The eternal game...
antonio_nimertis23 January 2018
THE OUTLINE IS OLD, WELL-KNOWN AND... beloved. The eternal dipole. Male and female, the two initial poles, and among them a potential difference that creates the necessary energetic environment for everything to be born. The ancient game that nobody knows when it started but it is certain that it will never finish. Power play, submission, pleasure. A continuous flow of sexual energy, bridges built and crushed with a nod, a breath, a word, a moment of denial or a decision to throw anyone into the arms of Infinity ... with any costs, with any consequences. Cinema has always loved these schemes, these games, especially between the mentors and the schoolgirls, the gripping milfs and the coward, puzzled, 'enchanting' adolescent, the 'next door' teenagers... And the truth is that these movies, as simplistic or ' primitive ' are - as no one seeks psychological depths in the analyses of characters, nor complex internal routes- have always been watched with pleasure. And sometimes even with awe! Beyond any structural failures, the movie has its virtues. The main, to me at last, is that the aim is not to convict the somatic or sexual pleasures. The film leaves a light aroma despite its rather dramatic background. And if it's worth to be watched is because of this exact feeling that leaves at the end. If someone expects more in another, more ... kinky area ... well he should search for other movies, made by much more sophisticated filmmakers that were based on literary masterpieces and filmed in seasons where sex had conquered much greater levels of exculpation... socially and philosophically.
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1/10
Dire
hieronymous-248-44908225 February 2015
This is presumably intended to be a 'significant' and 'artistic' film full of deep meanings on life, love and growing up. Its only claim to any of these is that the director made full use of longeurs where characters move very, very s l o w l y which served only to prolong an already dire experience.

None of the players appear to have acted in anything before, wooden would be too kind a description. The leading boy is an unlikeable kid who shows how he is 'suffering' by writing graffiti on his widowed mother's garage. His sexy new neighbour just happens to gag and whip men in her spare time (as you do in the suburbs) and after that I lost interest.

So will you.

Any resemblance to real life experiences of adolescence is purely absent.
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7/10
It's among the best Drama movies I've seen
arianaghasi9 April 2021
The story, actors, music and edition of this film was really good

It was strong enough to make me feel like I'm the teenage boy in this film and this is my story!
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8/10
Fetishes – the positives and the negatives
gradyharp3 May 2015
Stephen Lance wrote the story and adapted it for the screen with Gerard Lee and then directed it. It is an Australian film and is the debut for Lance and as such it is rather impressive.

The subject matter of BDSM seems to be growing in popularity, certainly in book and subsequently in films. But what Lance manages to do with this microanalytic form of exploring the extremes of human emotions through the parameters of physical poles of pleasure versus pain works much better than most. Perhaps that is due to the fact that he relies less on in your face on the screen acting out of the whips and chains and torture and agony that always seem so false when attempting to make a story and instead concentrates on why these extremes of acting out represent needs and psychological holds in need of patching. It also helps immensely that he elected to cast the devastatingly beautiful and gifted actress Emmanuelle Béart in the pivotal role of the Dominatrix. She is credible. The story is as follows: It's a long hot summer for Charlie Boyd (Harrison Gilbertson). He's sixteen, his hormones are raging and he's just found out his mother (Rachel Blake) is having an affair with his father's (Hugh Parker) best friend. One thing takes his mind off his problems, the mysterious woman Maggie (Emmanuelle Béart) down the street who has visitors day and night, and has just advertised for a gardener. But she is forgotten when a tragic family event tumbles Charlie into a world of pain, a pain so intense Charlie thinks no-one can help him. He's wrong. Someone can. Maggie, the beautiful French stranger. She's a professional, and she specialises in pain. Giving it, exploring it, sharing it, all for money. So Charlie falls in love, and despite herself so does she, drawn to this troubled boy who takes all the pain she can give and uses it to heal himself. And as Charlie heals, he turns that healing back onto her, his Mistress.

A talented Aussie cast adds a flavor to the film and as far as stories that address BDSM, this is one of the more successful ones. Grady Harp, May 15
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7/10
I'm Not Into BDSM (and never will be)
nammage2 December 2017
Warning: Spoilers
I have seen other BDSM films. Some I watched out of curiosity, others to see if it'd be told or used differently. They were all the same. This film starts out from an emotional viewpoint, in my opinion. A young teenage boy named Charlie goes through some horrible incidences from the start; most likely emotionally wrecking him and finds a sort of comfort in a BDSM mistress named Maggie who has emotional issues of her own. While the BDSM does play its role this film is not really centered on it, as a whole. This film seemed to be about people going through a lot of emotional pain. I can relate to that. A mother feeling as if she's losing her son (main character), a son who wants to escape, and the BDSM mistress going through her own tribulations with her own life, and a child of her own she is apart from but wants to be nearer to and even his emotional turmoil from not being near his mother. Like the toy gun incident. From his viewpoint it probably wasn't about the gun but the fact his mother gave it to him but he wasn't allowed to keep it.

There is a bit of dry humor to this film, especially during the BDSM scenes. Not that the film is necessarily making fun of what these men's sexual fantasies are but that it just comes off funny. While this does have its dry humor this is not a funny film, in the least. So emotionally wrought. Every time Maggie dominates Charlie it felt like she was losing herself more and more.

The legal age issue; I saw this before in "Noksaek uija" where apparently an older woman had a sexual relationship with a young boy (he was 19), the age of consent in that country, at the time that film was released, was 13. They changed that law since then but the character in that film was obviously not 13. Much older. In Australia the age of consent is 16 yet here it seems they have a social worker talk to Charlie and he states "I'm 16!" which he knows it's legal yet films like this like to say it's not or imply it; an untruthful bias that always seems to be on their line. According to Australian law on this subject (which I read) it is only illegal for someone to have sex with a 16/17 year old who is in a "supervisory" role. Maggie, even though a Dominatrix, is not in that role, so it's perfectly legal for them to have a sexual relationship. That's the lie this film tells; and films like it. If you think it should be a higher age don't lie about it in a film, take action outside of it. Like the other film, and being a technical rater, that deducts this otherwise emotional film down a bit. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed it.
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10/10
sublime, rough, truthful !
fannyzanke1 March 2015
Youngster meets mysterious middle aged female. What a rare work of cinema and beautiful, completely credible testimony of stretches in life that are anything but easy: Subtle yet outright in its set up of the human condition, this being tangled up in weird realities. Today I saw "Fifty Shades of Grey", which was not quite as bad as I had feared, but this one here is a entirely different category, it has true magic, like David Lynches " Blue Velvet", of which it can be called related and very worthy so. Every couple of minutes of this film are better than the whole of that hyped commercial glitzy picture before mentioned. Why does the crowd get to see the junk only?
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10/10
A work of art
LenaMieux27 May 2018
I can't even begin to describe how much I adored this movie the first time I watched it. I ended up watching it again the next day. I loved every second of it because it was so raw and emotional. Fifty shades doesn't even compare to this work of art. Every couple of weeks I remember it exists and get the urge to watch it again but it's really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The first time you watch it just makes you feel the most of everything. That's exactly why I loved it - it made me feel things that not many other movies did before.
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10/10
I found the title a wee bit misleading.
mastersouledout14 June 2015
Warning: Spoilers
(Spoiler Alert)Don't read if you haven't watched,I don't want to ruin it for you.It's about relationships Not BDSM,which is OK,although I found the title a wee bit misleading. The main character's father commits suicide in the garage a little into the film,he meets the Mistress who is having problems of her own. He becomes her gardener/landscaper,a relationship develops, keeping in mind he is 16,she is in or around her 30's.Her son is in a school for special needs children, she is trying to make ends meet,He is trying to feel wanted again,(after the death of his father)So, i won't give away everything,but I did like it. It deals with life,the choices we make,pain,rejection,death,etc.
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9/10
The boy is a bit abusive/obssessive, but overall the film is good
thegamerbb24 February 2021
The film is very interesting and holds you from start to finish. But you don't understand why Maggie allows Charlie to get involved in her life even though he clearly has a constant sick obsession with chasing her.
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