“The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” marks the audaciously raw, revealing, and excruciatingly funny feature debut of Joanna Arnow, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and comic-book writer who last turned the camera on herself in the boldly experiential shorts “i hate myself :)” and “Bad at Dancing.” It is the film that most crystallizes the open-ended promise of the Directors’ Fortnight section.
As the lead actor, screenwriter, director, and editor of her own confrontational, cringe-inducing style of autofiction, Arnow puts herself out there in more ways than one. For thirtysomething Ann, who navigates a long-term casual BDSM relationship, a low-level corporate job, and agonizing interactions with her overbearing parents, life is one interminably long submission. But through Arnow’s performance as Ann, which requires of her an unusual degree of on-screen physical vulnerability—given Ann’s penchant for sexual degradation and a consistent emotional blankness, reflecting the tedium of Ann’s daily existence—a personality starts to emerge. Ann is witty and opinionated if stymied by the path her life has taken; it’s all she can manage to withstand the never-ending business meetings about nothing of value and adhere dutifully to the repetitive and self-serving sexual demands of her BDSM partner, a disinterested older man (Scott Cohen) who will never remember he’s already asked where Ann went to college.
