When Desire Meets Grief — The Story Behind My Mistress
I remember when My Mistress was announced in 2013. It was an odd announcement. Australian cinema was not producing Australian dramas that featured teenage boys infatuated with dominatrixes. The concept was strange but the composition of the title — the lonely leather of the BDSM aesthetic draping over some figurative void — was exceptionally interesting. Additionally, the emotional promiss of the movie was striking and unusual for Australian cinema. My Mistress was an indictment of Australian cinema’s penchant for idle eroticism. The movie asked a far deeper question than the mere discovery of the corporeal. It was a work aiming to close the chasm of existential absence. It sought to answer the question: In the darkest corners of the soul, in the most harrowing recesses of grief and despair, where does one find another’s suffocating comfort?
The Buzz Before the Storm
I also remember how the marketing for My Mistress was primarily focused on the tastefully taboo and the emotional promiss was shoved aside for the moment. The bog standard marketing ploy is to invoke curiosity. The tagline was a perfect example: It was a warning and an invitation. Teasers released prior to the movie were dark and filled with contours of ’emotion-laden latex’ and ‘hungry’ glances that were sure to invoke controversy. Film forums lit up, some considering it an exploitation, the others, a cleverly daring work.
Adding to the intrigue was the casting: French actress Emmanuelle Béart – known worldwide for her emotionally sensual performances in Manon des Sources and 8 Women – was paired with young Australian actor Harrison Gilbertson, who had recently broken through in Accidents Happen and Need for Speed. The pairing seemed risky, but magnetic. While Béart brought the gravitas of a seasoned European star, Gilbertson, representing raw, youthful Gilbertson, and his ‘vulnerability’ was representative of youth ‘vulnerability and rawness. The age clash, along with the story itself, was the Gilbertson was ‘vulnerability and rawness.’ The age clash was reminiscent of the juxtap between Gilbertson and Béart himself. Gilbertson was ‘vulnerability and rawness.’ The age clash was reminiscent of the juxtap between Gilbertson and Béart himself.
Before the release, critics and the audience were already polarized. Some anticipated an erotic thriller in the vein of Secretary or Eyes Wide Shut, Others, however, were hoping for a more psychological adaptation, a coming of age story that would challenge the norms. What was delivered was a constructed hybrid, in between, and the result was ‘subdued, aching, and full of quiet moments.’
A Boy, a Woman, and the Weight of Grief
The tale starts with Charlie (Harrison Gilbertson), a boy of 16, trying to make sense of his father’s suicide. His mother’s emotional instability and grief further complicate the situation, leaving her unable to assist Charlie in processing trauma. Charlie starts to drift – both emotionally and physically – until one afternoon he stumbles upon Maggie (Emmanuelle Béart), a Frenchwoman living in his suburban neighborhood.
Maggie, it turns out, is a professional dominatrix, operating out of her home, secluded, surrounded by leather, ropes and secrets. What seems to Charlie as simple curiosity gradually builds to fascination and eventually, a complex, unique bond.
But here’s the key – My Mistress does not try to romanticize the bond. Director Stephen Lance depicts it as a form of bizarre healing. Charlie does not want Maggie for her job; it is the dominance and control he is attracted to. His chaotic and spiraling life is tamed, in a way, by her – an individual who literally commands control.
Over time, the relationship between the two changes from taboo to tenderness. Maggie’s loneliness begets seeing Charlie especially as she perceives part of her long-forgotten innocence. Although the relationship is socially and morally problematic, it is an image of two fractured souls struggling to achieve balance in an unforgiving world punishing vulnerability.
Layers beneath the leather
On first viewing, My Mistress appears to play with the erotic – the subdued lighting, the leather, the shadows dancing across Béart’s face- but it is really about emotional closeness. The motifs of bondage are not there just for provocation, but rather for the control, repression, and ultimately, the surrender that each character desperately seeks.
Charlie’s submission to Maggie is an emotional rather than a sexual release. In a world that has been stripped of power, it is a way of reclaiming control, and in that, it becomes a rebellion against his grief. Maggie’s dominance on the other hand, is her armor. Under that veneer of control is a woman so deeply sad, having had to learn to survive by manipulation.
Béart was cast as the most hunched Maggie under the weight of pain and realism in the story. At the starting point of her post-glamorous career in 2014 when the movie was made, the industry over criticism of her aging was obviously difficult. She had described the industry’s cruelty and her identification as an actress-self. With the beauty and the strength the role Maggie, a woman using her body to serve others, would be a difficult mask to put on.
There was an obvious firmness in her performance, like her earlier life experiences were being channeled. One scene was so striking, when Maggie, to Charlie, uncompromisingly asserted the fact about love ‘it’s a dangerous game’. This expression was powerful and melancholic in a confessional sense, unlike the confessional role of the character which is his and the actress’s blurring identification.
In the case of My Mistress, Harrison Gilbertson was in the process of redefining his career. After teenage roles in coming-of-age dramas, Gilbertson found himself pushed in the direction of more mature roles with My Mistress. He had to encapsulate the confusion of a young man grappling with the emotional complexities of love, and a young man with a propensity to mistake emotional connection for love. Gilbertson, in an interview, discussed his challenge of treading the ethical boundaries of the story while still keeping the emotional connection alive. His ability to hold back as an actor is what kept the film from lapsing into naked sensationalism.
The Reception: Expectation vs. Reality
The reception of My Mistress, after its long- awaited premiere, consisted of almost feverish responses. The film was commended for its emotional courage and for humanizing the arrangement of desire and grief. Yet, some argued that it crossed the line with its audacity. Most of the audience came expecting eroticism that was fast-paced and were expecting shock, and were thus, surprised that My Mistress was a slowly paced, meditative study on sorrow. Understatement was the key to Stephen Lance’s direction. He captured the emotion with minimalism. The effect of small movements – a slight tremor of a hand, a look, a pause – was amplified to a powerful effect.
Despite the debate surrounding the film, it was able to gain some respect for not taking advantage of its premise. It neither condemned its characters nor idolized them, simply regarding them with the understanding they deserved. This, paradoxically, became its greatest asset — perhaps explaining the film’s lack of popularity within mainstream audiences, while it became a favorite at festivals, for those audiences that appreciate emotional depth instead of spectacle.
Behind the Camera — The Quiet Chaos
There were challenges during the production of My Mistress. Due to modest budgets, production had to be kept small, with a lot of shooting happening at a single real location — the house that becomes Maggie’s private world. The crew was reported to have to adapt the lighting quite a bit to capture the emotion of the performers while also meeting the requirements of the illusion of mystery.
There were also early controversies regarding the cast. The character of Maggie was at first offered to other European actresses, but Béart’s emotional depth persuaded Lance that she was the only one who could blend sensuality and sorrow without descending into cliché. During rehearsals, she kept trying to change a number of the scenes, insisting that they be less sexual and more psychological, positing that real mastery is in emotional control, not the physical dominance of a situation.
Improvised intimacy that was highly structured is probably the most interesting behind the scenes detail. Instead of sticking to a precise script, Lance asked Béart and Gilbertson to react organically to one another. That is why the film has a fragile rhythm. The improvisation accounts for the uncomfortable, tender, and devastating moments.
What Lingers After the Credits
By the end of My Mistress, however, one comes to the realization that the film was not about sex at all, but rather sorrow masquerading as desire. It describes the lengths people go to survive grief and exposes the false sense of control healing and connection, as both a destructive and saving force, can be.
It’s easy to understand why My Mistress has audience divisions. It is not an easy watch. It does not disguise the pain of the characters. However, for those people looking beyond the taboo, it shows the very stark reality of love, that it often finds us, in all of its strange manifestations, when we are at our most broken.
And that’s what made the film unforgettable — not the latex, not the scandal, but rather the loneliness that inhabited the spaces in between.
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