S&M Sally is a 2015 American comedy-romance written and directed by Michelle Ehlen, the third film in her Butch Jamie series. It keeps following Jamie and Jill, a lesbian couple who walk into underground SM clubs. Ehlen aimed it at adults who were tired of Fifty Shades-style straight softcore and wanted kink that felt sharper and more real. The film does not chase glossy effects. It stays on flogging, electric play, fire play, and the unglamorous snack-room business of dungeon life. The people in it are adults who have already agreed to be there.
The argument starts in the bedroom. Jamie, played by Ehlen, finds out her girlfriend Jill, played by Jen McPherson, has already been exploring BDSM, and suggests underground club nights. Jamie takes the name Sally so she can stay anonymous without sounding like she invented a stranger. She files herself as the butch half of a classic butch/femme couple and treats that as a contract: she will be the dominant, Jill the submissive. The club does not honor the filing. Jill does not play the part Jamie wrote. Jamie keeps trying to run the scene and keeps getting her ego bruised. The joke, played as sex-positive farce rather than a trauma drama, is that gender presentation is not a document that says who holds the flogger and who gets tied. After the bruising, the two of them have to renegotiate.
David and Lola run a parallel comic plot about who is cool enough to actually follow through on a threesome. Shaela Cook plays Lola. Scott Keiji Takeda plays David. Adrian Gonzalez plays Sebastian, Dolly Grey plays Melina, Christopher Callen plays Mistress Chyenne, and Shaun Laundry plays Princess.
The film was a Kickstarter micro-budget. Unused campaign money went to the L.A. LGBT Center. Principal photography was on location in Los Angeles. Olivia Kuan shot it, David Monster did production design, Crystal Nardico did makeup, and Ehlen cut it herself. Johnny Harris wrote the score. Tracks in the film include “Black Lipstick Kiss,” written by Lynx Dean and performed by Random Order; “Death To Vanilla Sex,” written and performed by Count Boogie; and “Radioactive,” written and performed by Kiirstin Marilyn. “Black Lipstick Kiss” won best song at the Fetisch Film Festival in Kiel, Germany.
The Independent Critic called it about a hundred times more entertaining and more authentic than the straighter, more awkwardly awful Fifty Shades material: a romp through flogging, electric play, and the snack room. Sexologist Dr. Patti Britton recommended it on Facebook to sex coaches and sexologists covering BDSM. Curve Magazine called it funny, sexy, and genuine, with minimal gayngst and a lot of representation. It picked up festival hardware on the LGBT circuit, including a jury special mention at the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Barcelona, the QAward for best comedic feature in Fort Worth, Texas, and a jury prize for best feature in Philadelphia, among others. Mainstream distributors could still treat it as too niche or too explicit. On that circuit it had a place. Butch and femme do not lock in who is top and who is bottom. Sally is just the name Jamie hides behind while she finds that out.
