I had more grandiose plans for Visual Aroma this week: I was going to write about Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (2017) but I had forgotten how unrelenting that film is, how at times it feels like a world without joy. It begins with liquid and dust, and the smell of your own breath. There is burning plastic, blood cleaned off a hammer. In the first few minutes there is an atmosphere briefly reminiscent of Fight Club and Drive, but this is a movie much closer to Jane Campion’s In the Cut, or Carine Adler’s hugely underseen Under the Skin (1997). It felt not quite right to give this film the Visual Aroma treatment in the end—it is somehow too grim, too real in its evils and its sadness.
Last night, I was still unsettled by You Were Never Really Here, and by the fact that I am preparing to teach Fight Club (the novel and the film). While I was not quite in the place of sadness that leads me towards the comfort of Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, I decided to revisit a film I hadn’t seen for a number of years: Preaching to the Perverted. I rented this movie a lot in the 90s. In fact, I may well have pirated it on VHS, which means I must have turned it into one of my comfort movies of that period. Filled with an array of violet latex delights and truly next level eye-make-up, I can only imagine that the House of Thwax smells like paradise: baby powder, leather, and the perfume the dommes put on the backs of their knees: Ilk perfume’s Libertine, with its notes of wax, coffee and leather would be an excellent choice.
I am DELIGHTED to tell you that this movie has a maintained website, and that back in 2015 the Guardian published a top ten list of films about kink. I have seen eight of them, in case you were wondering. There is also a photo gallery from the film that is well worth your time. You’re welcome, fellow freaks.
We follow Peter (Christien Anholt, who has definitely had a bit of a twink to DILF moment if his current IMDB pic is anything to go by), our charmingly hapless protagonist, as he becomes embroiled in a right wing politician’s plot to bring a private case against Tanya Cheex (Guinevere Turner), an American dominatrix, performance artist and PhD candidate who heads up the House of Thwax. The politician in question, Henry Harding (Tom Bell), voices concerns about perversion, ‘filth’ and invokes an alliance between conservatives, Christians, and swerfs (hmmmm, too bad we didn’t leave that behind in the 90s) and decides to try and make an example of the fetish community via Tanya. Tanya would certainly wear an imposing perfume, something faintly unsettling like Chronotope’s Intra Venus, with hyacinth and yarrow, and a “poison bulb accord” to underscore her ability to inflict pain as well as pleasure.
This is fundamentally a light-hearted film, and the constant presence of incongruously lipstick pink props reminds of this at every turn. British parliament is as filled with mysterious rituals as the world of kink and Peter is a virgin in every sense: inexperienced but eager to ‘serve the public good’ when in fact what he finds he enjoys is serving Tanya.
“No penetration ever!” Tanya tells an over eager submissive who is then summarily ejected from the dungeon/commune. More interested in her clit ring, and the attentions of Eugenie (the incomparably delicious Julie Graham), I deeply admire this film for its validation of sensory experiences and other forms of intimacy, the pleasures of dressing up, flirting, of offering pleasure to someone else, and demanding the kind of pleasure you really want. Eugenie, with her pleasingly touchable buzzcut, would certainly wear a perfume that might draw you in, something with blood orange like the now defunct Reek Perfume’s Damn Rebel Bitches, a scent that would wind its way from the edge of her array of corsets and crop tops.
The first time Peter goes undercover at a fetish club (in an attempt to gather evidence of bodily harm), he is confronted by an imposing domme who tells him he “can only be one or the other,” which is a little limiting, if I’m honest. When Tanya finally asks him “so what do you like?” And he replies with “nothing too painful,” she convinces him to let her pierce his nipples on stage, which is undeniably hot. When she discovers Peter has no clue how to eat pussy, she summons Eugenie for a lesson, warmly telling Peter: “Watch, learn, then it’s your turn.” Rather than becoming impatient, Tanya is consistently affectionate and attentive in her instructions, truly a model to us all. Peter is permitted to explore his tastes and attractions here, and while he is innocent, he is not unthinking or unattuned to his own preferences. I imagine he begins smelling of nothing more than that the simplest soap, and ends up with something really decadent, unafraid to borrow from House of Thwax’s collection (because of course there would be a perfume collection.)
I cannot tell you how much I want a detailed production history of this shoot. I truly hope everyone had a fun time making this picture because it does seem that way. The ending of this film will fill your heart with joy, and it ranks highly amongst films I’ve written about here that demonstrate it is not only possible, but indeed desirable to live differently.