Sheila McLaughlin
Not to be confused with Luc Besson's film of the same title from the same year. Documentarian Andrew Horn's second narrative feature.
Jo and Agatha are lovers. Both have careers: the Brasilian-born Agatha is an attorney; Jo is a filmmaker, working hard to complete the shooting of a movie called, "Catalina." Agatha may be seeing things: she's jealous, convinced Jo is having an affair with a man and follows her. But is it Jo she's following, or someone who looks like her? Jo is either too exhausted to pay much attention to Agatha or she's cleverly hiding her affair. We see some of "Catalina," with overtones of melodrama, and sometimes, when Agatha watches the shooting or looks at rushes with Jo, Agatha sees Jo in scenes of sex or violence instead of the lead actress. Can the two of them sort this out?
Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As artist she specializes in the staging of elaborate BDSM fantasies and her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American "trainee," and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.
Over three silent sequences, the short film shows moments of sustained, internal tension just before an emotional outburst on the part of the protagonists.
