What makes it different from others?

A lot of fun.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Watched this film via a recommendation from the Amazon lists, and found it a very strange film indeed. It is not one I can describe easily, as it both uplifted me and also brought me down at the same time.It is - almost - a love story between two damaged and incomplete people, trying to find something that can make them whole, but not knowing at the time, that they are simply running away from reality.Some stunning images, clothing, and scenes bring the story to great heights, but the ending - although what needed to happen - brought things crashing down, and left me feeling very sad for both of them. A good film overall.

THE OUTLINE IS OLD, WELL-KNOWN AND... beloved. The eternal dipole. Male and female, the two initial poles, and among them a potential difference that creates the necessary energetic environment for everything to be born. The ancient game that nobody knows when it started but it is certain that it will never finish. Power play, submission, pleasure. A continuous flow of sexual energy, bridges built and crushed with a nod, a breath, a word, a moment of denial or a decision to throw anyone into the arms of Infinity ... with any costs, with any consequences. Cinema has always loved these schemes, these games, especially between the mentors and the schoolgirls, the gripping milfs and the coward, puzzled, 'enchanting' adolescent, the 'next door' teenagers... And the truth is that these movies, as simplistic or ' primitive ' are - as no one seeks psychological depths in the analyses of characters, nor complex internal routes- have always been watched with pleasure. And sometimes even with awe! Beyond any structural failures, the movie has its virtues. The main, to me at last, is that the aim is not to convict the somatic or sexual pleasures. The film leaves a light aroma despite its rather dramatic background. And if it's worth to be watched is because of this exact feeling that leaves at the end. If someone expects more in another, more ... kinky area ... well he should search for other movies, made by much more sophisticated filmmakers that were based on literary masterpieces and filmed in seasons where sex had conquered much greater levels of exculpation... socially and philosophically.

Stephen Lance wrote the story and adapted it for the screen with Gerard Lee and then directed it. It is an Australian film and is the debut for Lance and as such it is rather impressive.The subject matter of BDSM seems to be growing in popularity, certainly in book and subsequently in films. But what Lance manages to do with this microanalytic form of exploring the extremes of human emotions through the parameters of physical poles of pleasure versus pain works much better than most. Perhaps that is due to the fact that he relies less on in your face on the screen acting out of the whips and chains and torture and agony that always seem so false when attempting to make a story and instead concentrates on why these extremes of acting out represent needs and psychological holds in need of patching. It also helps immensely that he elected to cast the devastatingly beautiful and gifted actress Emmanuelle Béart in the pivotal role of the Dominatrix. She is credible. The story is as follows: It's a long hot summer for Charlie Boyd (Harrison Gilbertson). He's sixteen, his hormones are raging and he's just found out his mother (Rachel Blake) is having an affair with his father's (Hugh Parker) best friend. One thing takes his mind off his problems, the mysterious woman Maggie (Emmanuelle Béart) down the street who has visitors day and night, and has just advertised for a gardener. But she is forgotten when a tragic family event tumbles Charlie into a world of pain, a pain so intense Charlie thinks no-one can help him. He's wrong. Someone can. Maggie, the beautiful French stranger. She's a professional, and she specialises in pain. Giving it, exploring it, sharing it, all for money. So Charlie falls in love, and despite herself so does she, drawn to this troubled boy who takes all the pain she can give and uses it to heal himself. And as Charlie heals, he turns that healing back onto her, his Mistress.A talented Aussie cast adds a flavor to the film and as far as stories that address BDSM, this is one of the more successful ones. Grady Harp, May 15

This is presumably intended to be a 'significant' and 'artistic' film full of deep meanings on life, love and growing up. Its only claim to any of these is that the director made full use of longeurs where characters move very, very s l o w l y which served only to prolong an already dire experience.None of the players appear to have acted in anything before, wooden would be too kind a description. The leading boy is an unlikeable kid who shows how he is 'suffering' by writing graffiti on his widowed mother's garage. His sexy new neighbour just happens to gag and whip men in her spare time (as you do in the suburbs) and after that I lost interest.So will you.Any resemblance to real life experiences of adolescence is purely absent.