Going Under is a 2004 drama about a married man and a partnered dominatrix who form a personal bond and try to see each other outside her workplace. Starring Geno Lechner and Roger Rees, it was co-written and directed by psychotherapist Eric Werthman. First shown publicly at the 2004 São Paulo Film Festival, it opened theatrically in New York in 2006 and reached DVD in 2007 via independent label Blue Underground. Critics praised its emotional depth on sadomasochistic attachment while giving mixed reactions to the clinical tone shaped by Werthman’s psychotherapy background. For BDSM-film viewers it is one of the rare narrative features that treats pro-domme labor, married masochism, and “outside the dungeon” intimacy as a serious relationship problem rather than pure shock erotica.
Plot: Dungeon Rules, Outside Chaos
Peter (Roger Rees) and his dominatrix Suzanne (Geno Lechner) grow a personal relationship inside SM sessions. When Suzanne quits her job, they try to keep the bond without the rules and boundaries of the dungeon. Opening credits show frescoes from Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries—including an angel with a whip—signaling ritual pain and initiation before any dialogue.
In the dungeon, Suzanne tells Peter she is quitting at month’s end and agrees to see him outside. Peter becomes distracted at home with wife Pat (Kit Flanagan) and in his work as a psychotherapist. Pat already knows and accepts his masochistic activities but worries about his attachment to Suzanne. On their first outside meeting Suzanne doubts the choice, then lets curiosity win. Her girlfriend Miko (Miho Nikaido) notices the distraction and confronts her.
Flashbacks show their first session: Peter calling himself “Robert,” Suzanne working as “Mistress Diana.” He undresses, waits, describes preferred masochistic acts; she begins. Connection is fast; they exchange real names by session’s end. In the present, Suzanne’s relationship with Miko frays. Peter struggles to write a psychiatric paper while remembering a childhood of severe learning disability and Attention Deficit Disorder. Flashbacks continue their SM—piercings, pinching—while outside Peter clings, analyzes, and sometimes tries to overpower her emotionally.
At a diner Suzanne recounts a teenage attempt to make friends by performing oral sex on a boy named Tim, then the shame when the whole new school found out. Peter suggests the story still hurts or she would not tell it; he shares his own school struggles with disability. Suzanne recoils from the intimacy. After she postpones another outside meeting, Peter visits an SM club but cannot stay in headspace with Mistress Terry (Angela Forrest) and stops her flogging. He leaves a pleading message. Suzanne instead goes to Philadelphia for a one-time session with an old client arranged by former madam Juno (Phyllis Somerville). Back in New York she learns her mother Gretchen (Jenny Sterlin) has cancer and calls Peter for a ride. Tension with her mother leaves her leaning on him. At her apartment they kiss passionately for the first time. Suzanne says she will never be comfortable with how they met; she stops him before penetration, leaves, returns, lets him touch her again—then goes blank and collapses in his arms. Peter sits with her, then goes home.
Days later outdoors, Suzanne says she cannot allow herself to want him. Peter understands but does not want to lose her; she ends it anyway. Final lakeside scene: Peter apologizes to Pat for the hurt caused through Suzanne. A closing voice-over phone call: Peter asks to meet outside again; Suzanne says it will be no different than a year ago. Peter falls silent. The year gap on that call is the film’s quietest cruelty: nothing about the outside world fixed the problem that the dungeon’s frame had contained.
Throughout, the SM practice itself is neither condemned nor sold as liberation slogan. Piercings, pinching, flogging, and pro-session logistics appear as work and hunger. What breaks is the attempt to convert paid, rule-bound masochism into mutual romantic-sexual partnership while Peter remains married and Suzanne remains uneasy about how they met. Werthman keeps returning to distraction—Peter at home, Suzanne in bed with Miko—as the symptom of unfinished negotiation.
Cast
- Geno Lechner as Suzanne
- Roger Rees as Peter
- Kit Flanagan as Pat
- Miho Nikaido as Miko
- Jon Johnson as Crying man (Peter’s patient); Wendy Scharfman as Paula (patient)
- Phyllis Somerville as Juno
- Beau Van Donkelaar as Steve (Suzanne’s brother)
- Angela Forrest as Mistress Terry
- Jenny Sterlin as Gretchen
Production Notes: Actors Meet the Dungeon
Lechner felt an immediate connection to the project before knowing she would play Suzanne. After meeting Werthman with Rees, both actors visited a dungeon—their first close look at the SM world. Lechner had no prior experience; her training worked so well that some professional dominatrices who saw the film asked if she really was a pro-domme. Rees’s agents initially refused to send the script as too racy; he insisted, preferring challenging roles. Nudity concerned him, but he decided the story justified it.
Festivals, Theatrical Run, and DVD
First public screening: São Paulo International Film Festival, 22 October 2004 (Official Selection). Other key showings: CineKink Film Festival, New York, October 2005 (Best Narrative Feature); Northampton Independent Film Festival, November 2005 (Best of Fest). Theatrical: one New York cinema, 15–22 June 2006 (8 days), gross about US$3,917. DVD: Blue Underground, 26 June 2007—unrated, color, NTSC, widescreen 1.78:1/16:9, no closed captions or subtitles. Extras: audio commentary with Werthman and Rees; “Pushing the Boundaries” interviews; Black & Blue Ball footage from New York; trailers; DVD-ROM essay by New York sex therapist Marta Helliesen, Ph.D.
Why Kink Viewers Still Seek It Out
Werthman’s dual role as psychotherapist and filmmaker shapes every beat. Sessions look real enough that pro-dommes asked if Lechner was one of them; Peter’s work life shows a therapist who cannot stop analyzing the woman who tops him; Suzanne’s blank-out at the edge of mutual sex reads as trauma and professional boundary collapse, not as a cheap “she really wanted it” twist. The Pompeii whip-angel frescoes frame SM as ancient ritual language rather than millennial novelty. Pat’s knowing acceptance of Peter’s masochism—until attachment to Suzanne threatens the marriage—is rarer on screen than either pure secret double life or pure shock discovery.
The film’s mixed critical reception tracks that clinical seriousness. Viewers who wanted hotter dungeon spectacle found the pace analytical; viewers hungry for emotional realism in commercial SM appreciated the refusal to treat the red room as only costume. Festival wins at CineKink (Best Narrative Feature) and Northampton (Best of Fest) and Official Selection status in São Paulo put the film on the kink-cinema map even when the New York theatrical gross stayed under four thousand dollars. Blue Underground’s DVD package—commentary, actor interviews, Black & Blue Ball footage, and a sex-therapist essay—treats the movie as discussion object, which fits a story that is itself about talking through desire until talk fails.
Going Under is not a how-to or a softcore showcase; it is a relationship drama about what happens when professional SM boundaries collapse into mutual need. Married masochist, queer-partnered dominatrix, mother illness, disability memory, and failed “vanilla” intimacy outside the dungeon—all treated with psychotherapeutic seriousness. The Philly session with Juno, the failed club flogging with Mistress Terry, and the final phone refusal a year later underline the same thesis: outside the dungeon’s rules, Peter and Suzanne cannot build a stable third form of intimacy. Related topics: BDSM in films, pro-domme cinema, CineKink, Blue Underground cult releases, and ethical limits of client–dominatrix attachment. Small box office did not erase its festival reputation: for adult audiences who want SM feelings on screen rather than only SM aesthetics, Werthman’s film remains a key early-2000s title—and still one of the best English-language features about what pro-domme work costs when a client wants to become a person.
