The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is a 2023 American comedy written, directed by, and starring Joanna Arnow, with Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti, Michael Cyril Creighton, and Alysia Reiner in the cast and Sean Baker as executive producer. It premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2023 and opened in the United States on 26 April 2024. For kink-aware viewers, it is a deadpan BDSM comedy of manners: a thirty-three-year-old submissive navigating casual D/s, aftercare conflicts, workplace absurdity, and the difficulty of bringing fetish into a “normal” relationship without losing herself. The film treats submission as real relationship infrastructure—not a single titillating scene—and that is exactly why it belongs on a BDSM film shelf.
Plot: Ann, Allen, and the Long Casual Dynamic
Ann is thirty-three and in a long-term casual BDSM relationship with Allen as his submissive. She is emotionally detached from an anonymous corporate job, from judgmental parents, and from a dom who shows little interest in her life outside the dynamic. At work she receives a one-year service award despite having been there more than three years; her manager assigns a project that would make her own job obsolete. She begins seeing Thomas, a younger man who scores children’s films, but that relationship fizzles when he reunites with an ex. Her sister crashes at her apartment as a marriage collapses over the husband’s infidelity. At work, Ann’s manager is laid off; Ann receives new responsibilities and a title she does not want. She meets Elliot, a dom far more invested in roleplay than previous partners—he dresses her in a “fuckpig” costume and is more demeaning and controlling. At first the intensity appeals; then she hits friction: he dislikes that she needs aftercare, and she grows bored of his public-humiliation efforts. The film treats aftercare not as optional fluff but as a compatibility deal-breaker—rare honesty for a comedy that could have stayed only in costume jokes.
Her sister becomes more involved in Ann’s life, often frustrating her; boss Karl starts micromanaging. After the sister realizes Ann is in a relationship—something Ann has never confided to family—Ann asks her to move out. Ann returns to Allen, who claims he did not recognize her because she changed her username on the site where they met. She withdraws when she learns he is a Zionist, then apologizes soon after—politics and play colliding in the same awkward register as everything else in her life. She takes a break from relationships for a vacation with highly critical parents: dad tries to play guitar and sing while she’s trying to read; mother gets snippy whenever Ann talks back. Friends help her build a dating profile on a non-fetish site. She goes on a series of dates that lead nowhere until she meets Chris, bonding over a shared love of A League of Their Own. They begin seeing each other; Ann is unsure whether they are casual or serious. She has trouble communicating needs because she is used to men telling her what to do rather than asking what she feels. She spends more time with her parents and takes on more work responsibility. When a coworker she spends time with leaves for another job, she frames his photographs as a going-away gift. The relationship with Chris grows more serious; she tries to introduce BDSM. He seems uncomfortable at first, then they attempt to incorporate domination and submission. She also falls into old habits, reconnecting with Allen despite his ongoing lack of interest in her life. The film ends without clarifying whether she was cheating on Chris, whether they broke up, or whether she was seeing an old dom with consent—leaving the ethical mess of overlapping dynamics unresolved, which matches Ann’s stalled, half-chosen life.
Cast
- Scott Cohen — Allen
- Babak Tafti — Chris
- Joanna Arnow — Ann
- Michael Cyril Creighton — Karl
- Alysia Reiner — Sister
- Keith Poulson — Simon
- Peter Vack — Thomas
- Parish Bradley — Elliot
Arnow’s dual role as writer-director-star keeps the tone intimate and observational: the submissive’s interior flatness is the comic engine, not a parade of set-piece kinks for the camera’s sake. Cohen’s Allen is the classic low-effort casual dom; Tafti’s Chris is the non-scene partner who might learn; Bradley’s Elliot is the high-protocol humiliation specialist who fails on aftercare. Reiner’s sister and Creighton’s Karl supply the non-kink pressures that crowd Ann’s calendar and her ability to choose.
Release Path and Critical Reception
After the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight premiere, Magnolia Pictures acquired U.S. distribution. Festival stops included the Toronto International Film Festival (9 September 2023), the New York Film Festival (5 October 2023), and AFI Fest (27 October 2023) before the 26 April 2024 U.S. release. On Rotten Tomatoes, 85% of 48 critics’ reviews were positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10; the site’s consensus says Arnow finds bleak humor in the struggle to connect—a deadpan comedy that discomfits as confidently as it amuses. Metacritic assigned 77 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. For BDSM-media audiences, the praise matters because the film does not treat kink as a single shock or a redemption arc: casual D/s, username logistics on fetish sites, fuckpig costumes, aftercare conflict, and the awkward project of training a vanilla-leaning boyfriend all sit inside the same deadpan frame as corporate awards and parental guitar songs.
What the film gets unusually right for kink audiences is the boredom and logistics: username changes on fetish sites, aftercare as a hard limit for one partner and a need for another, the mismatch between high-protocol humiliation and everyday emotional availability, and the difficulty of translating “tell me what to do” skills into a relationship that expects mutual check-ins. Ann’s corporate life—wrong service award, job-killing project, unwanted promotion—is not comic relief from the BDSM plot; it is the same flat affect applied to labor and love. The open ending refuses both punishment and redemption arcs for poly-ish or cheating-adjacent dynamics; it simply leaves her in the middle of unfinished choices.
For bdsmwild readers, this is contemporary BDSM comedy done right: submission as habit and relationship pattern, not only wardrobe; doms who fail on care; a woman who cannot easily switch from “tell me what to do” to mutual negotiation; and an ending that refuses tidy ethical closure. Arnow’s film belongs next to other power-exchange dramas that take the lifestyle seriously enough to make it funny—because real scene logistics are often funnier, and sadder, than pulp fantasy.
