Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Melanie Oates
Starring: Michaela Kurimsky, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Peter Mooney, Rhiannon Morgan, Patricia Andrews
I didn't bother with that Bonnie Blue (porn performer infamous for having
sex with a thousand different men over a single 12 hour session)
documentary. All a bit grubby and depressing for my sensitive soul (her
schtick is a bit like those hot dog eating competitions they have America,
or that show where celebrities consume really hot chillies during an
interview: I get the grim spectacle of it all, but, as someone who really
likes food, this masochistic performance, the supposed "endurance," flies
in the face of what is good, nutritious and rewarding about the process of
eating/doing sex). In a late lunch discussion of the documentary yesterday
afternoon, it was brought up that while the show canvassed Blue herself,
her apparent mindset, etc, at no one point was the focus put upon any of
the hundreds of men literally queuing for hours with other strangers to
put their penis into a woman for 40 seconds at a time. What's that all
about?! What's the psychology at work there, and why are they let off the
hook?! Watching Sweet Angel Baby, Melanie Oates' thought provoking and involving drama about an
erotic Instagrammer who is sex shamed in her cloistered Newfoundland
community, the context drew oblique parallels. Not having a personal
interest in such media, I wouldn't know who Bonnie Blue even was if not
for the constant ramming of her image and exploits down my digital throat.
It isn't even her content. It's the discourse, the takes, the rabid
arguments both against and for the stunts, with the latter entailing
dissonant principles such as "empowerment." In a similar manner as to how
the persona of Sydney Sweeney (nb, I do like SS, though, but as a movie
star: she has a sense of her own absurdity, always looks great and also
produced the weird and ace
Immaculate) has been weaponised by both sides, it is as if the world demands I have
an opinion either way on something I don't really care to waste my mental
energy on. A tale as old as Genesis, women are judged as men are absolved:
their actions and agency seemingly standing for the inviolability of their
entire sex.
Yet give me the small c conservative and big c cosy milieus of the fishing
community, tight knit both in terms of social bonds and cable sweaters,
where Sweet Angel Baby's protagonist Eliza lives (Michaela Kurimsky, magnetic and
reminds me of the Swedish popstar Tove Lo, a fave). The sort of place (my
pal) Laurie Gilmore (she signed her book for me at an event) swoons to;
sea crashing upon rocks in the near distance as neighbours chop wood and
bake bread for each other in log cabin homes; the interiors of which are
composed of low lamps, throw blankets and wood burners: mmmmm. Sundays are
spent at church (an institution which Eliza fundraises for), and weekend
nights host neighbourly get togethers where Eliza drinks from a carton of
wine and, as a young woman, is constantly asked why she doesn't have a
boyfriend yet: I'm not sure which would be more unedifying. This is the
problem with such a community, your business is everyone else's business,
and, as per the truths universally acknowledged in the populist fictions
of Ms. Gilmore, every young woman needs a young man.
Or does she? Eliza has her own identity carved out: partly via her downlow
relationship with female islander Toni (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers -
what a name), but mainly due to her erogenous Instagram account, wherein
she composes ambitiously arty pornographic content. She poses nude with an
axe in the woods, is smeared in Saskatoon jam, and fetishises a candlelit
moose head: a True North Marina Abramović in waiting, whose iconography is
explicitly linked to her homeland of Eh. The shots are both imaginative
and sexy, the twin totems of effective pornography (misogynistically
loaded itself, the word pornography means "writing of prostitutes," with
the latter noun specifically aligned with female sex workers, a default
definition historically pre-modified with the prefix "male" to provide
gender distinction). Kurimsky's performance is unflinching, with the
explicit imagery Eliza produces achieving a level of vivid beauty which
explicitly predicates upon her milky skin and striking figure. Is there a
sense that Eliza is pushing the envelope, asking for trouble in a
self-sabotaging way (a reading which later events will bear out...)..
Perhaps Eliza loves her community but is nonetheless bored and seeks
adventure beyond the traditionalist boundaries of Newfoundland, and that
she feels that she is worth more than her lot. How else to explain her
ongoing affair, and third secret life, with town alpha Sean (Peter Mooney), who proceeds to blackmail Eliza re the Instagram stuff as he's
cheating on his own wife....
It all, of course, comes out in the third act, and, with equal
inevitability, all goes a bit Hester Prynne with the townsfolk getting
righteously angry because a) gay, b) affair with married man (true to
form, Sean escapes scrutiny because men can't help it etc) and c) weird
porn (tbf, Eliza did sneak into a neighbours' garage to use his moose head
as an amatory prop...). We witness a time-honoured tale of small-town envy
masked as bigotry, with recriminations effacing the ostensible harmony and
instead exposing abiding hypocrisy. And while I watched
Sweet Angel Baby and scoffed at certain points (would people
be this upset? In 2025?!) as part of the smug metropolitan elite of
Caerphilly (we have our own Pride and everything), perhaps I should check
my privilege. The propensity for outrage, that narcotic sensation of
pointing the finger, looms large. Slight (and subjective) criticisms are
aimed towards Eliza's mea culpa, which suggests that relations with the
odious Sean made her feel wanted: um, mate, you've got a beautiful and
loving gf in waiting right here? And would it have been too much to hope
that in this intelligent and liberated film, the town's quibbles would be
further reckoned with, and not just Eliza's mistakes? Such equivocations,
however, are overridden by a gloriously indulgent climatic sex scene, its
overt detail and protraction representing physical love in a manner which
is both authentic and moving. A reminder of where joy truly endures.
Sweet Angel Baby is in Canadian
cinemas from August 15th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
