Kink
キンク
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Inside the San Francisco armoury where BDSM porn is made; consent negotiation shown at production scale.
Kink goes inside the San Francisco Armory, a century-old brick fortress at 14th and Mission streets that houses Kink.com, the world's leading producer of BDSM pornography. James Franco, who had shot scenes there for another film, talked his longtime collaborator Christina Voros into directing it.
It opens with Maitresse Madeline, one of the company's directors, questioning a new male performer about everything that might be done to him on the day, so that he can say yes or no to each. The founder, Peter Acworth, a Briton who started the business from his university dorm room in 1997, then walks Voros through the building, a place of offices, dressing rooms and dozens of sets, and is unbothered when the noise of a group scene carries from around the corner.
Voros watches it the way a film would watch any workplace: pre-production meetings, set building, rehearsals, directors at their monitors. Van Darkholme, a Vietnamese American director, concentrates over a staged gay bondage scene like any film-maker chasing a shot. The talent coordinator, Jessie Lee, explains that when performers play with pain the company wants them to feel it and respond for real. The rules are spelled out. The performers, called models, set their own limits and record interviews before and after the harder scenes; safe words are sacred; directors give aftercare to the people they have just put through a scene. Performers describe 'subspace', compare a shoot to training for a marathon, and say BDSM is misunderstood. Doubts are rare. One performer, asked whether she would want her children in the business, says there are a lot of lost souls there. The film ends on a black screen, over the sound of a scene still being shot, and the credits roll without music.
Starring
Peter AcworthHimself
The British founder of Kink.com, who started it from a dorm room and gives the film its tour of the Armory.
Maitresse MadelineHerself
A company director who opens the film by taking a new performer through his limits, question by question.
Van DarkholmeHimself
A Vietnamese American director of gay bondage scenes, shown working with the concentration of any film-maker.
Jessie LeeHerself
The talent coordinator, who explains that the company wants performers to feel the pain and respond for real.
Why it matters
Kink puts consent at the centre of a subject most people only imagine from outside. In the Armory, scenes that look like cruelty are negotiated in advance, stopped by a word and followed by care, and the film makes a convincing case that this one workplace runs on respect and explicit agreement. It is also a film about work: craft, schedules, people who are good at their jobs. What it leaves out belongs to its subject too. Reviewers noted that it barely questions the company, says nothing of the complaints some former performers had made, and never asks what an audience does with a steady supply of simulated abuse. Its ending, a scene heard over a black screen, seems to know this. The question it leaves open is a real one: whether careful consent on the set settles what the images mean once they leave it.