Review of "Dogs Don't Wear Pants"

Billed by All4 as a romantic drama, this was a stark and occasionally horrifying film about the world of BDSM. Juha is a successful surgeon whose wife dies tragically and unexpectedly in a swimming accident at their summer house by a lake, and he's unable to deal with his grief or move on. Then he stumbles into an S&M dungeon underneath the tatoo parlour where he takes his young teen daughter for her tongue piercing (he's a very permissive dad) and finds himself drawn to the activities there. He goes back for a session, and then another - the main appeal is sexual asphyxiation, during which he finds himself reconnected with the dead wife.

There is a lot of depiction of the mechanics of the scenes. The rubber-wearing dominatrix, Mona, is not simply working at this - she has a day job as kind and caring physiotherapist, and she is herself fascinated and engaged by BDSM. And there's something about the connection with Juha that seems to affect her deeply...at one point they kiss after she's finished strangling him, something that appears to be proscribed in the BDSM practioners' handbook.

And the scenes get darker and darker...this is no 'Escape to Eden' or 'Maitresse', where the fascination with BDSM often has a light, even comic touch. There's lots of extreme pain, disfiguration and sometimes brushes with near-death. I found bits of really hard to watch, even though it has an apparently happy ending in a BDSM club.

Watche on All4.