The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed Is a Captivating Dive into NYC Doldrums
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed begins with writer/director Joanna Arnow’s naked body curled up next to her character Ann’s dozing dom, Allen (Scott Cohen). She humps him slowly and awkwardly over the duvet, and quietly encourages his lack of interest in her own sexual gratification. It’s true that their sub-dom dynamic is largely focused on Allen’s pleasure, while Ann is merely his willing servant. It’s a dynamic that they’ve shared together since Ann was in her mid-twenties, with Allen at least 20 years her senior. But later in the film, Ann reveals that she can’t actually achieve climax from physical touch, anyway. In fact, she spends most of the film outwardly bored by sex, although we never see her engaged in coital affairs of the penis-to-vagina variety. Ann gives blowjobs, she gets spanked, she dresses up as a “fuck pig,” she runs across a room between a wall and sucking Allen’s nipple. Throughout the film, Ann hops between a small handful of BDSM relationships—the only kinds of relationships she’s ever been a part of—until she meets the soft-natured Chris (Babak Tafti). It’s here that Ann decides she’s done with the sub-dom life and is finally willing to try “real” dating.
For as chaotic as this arc sounds, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is an incredibly still film. There is hardly any non-diegetic music, and characters do not say very much. But there is a lack of deliberation in their words compared to, say, the heightened directness of a Wes Anderson screenplay. The film is full of negative space, both in the compositions and in the dialogue. Barton Cortright’s static camera frames its subjects from a cold distance with sporadic emphasis on walls which conjoin at their corner, and it makes otherwise intimate surroundings like Ann’s apartment feel foreboding and vulnerable. It mirrors the type of vulnerability Ann puts herself through in the film, an outwardly unassuming young woman of very few words and physical expressions, who nevertheless involves herself in what some might consider “outlandish” sexual exploits.
Ann’s days are much less interesting, and The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is mostly composed of vignettes of her life. Ann works for a nameless company in a dull office position, enduring a merger that has caused her headaches, late nights and circular phone calls with her superior. She visits her mother and father regularly, where her acerbic personality gets her into disagreements. Her sister stays with her, she waits for the F train, she folds her laundry, she goes to yoga, she calls her mom, she makes dinner from a bag of microwavable mush (the sound design is often impeccable). If one were so bold, they might generously compare it to Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
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