The hero doesn’t usually fall for the dominatrix, right? I’ve seen a few films … not all, clearly, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a leading dominatrix. Wait. Wait. Maybe I have. Kate Winslet played a dominatrix in Titanic, right? No? Oh. Guess I mistook that for another film.
About this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “A dominatrix? This film can’t be American, can it?” You would be right. Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is Finnish, yet the sex life of struggling middle-ager Juha is anything but finnished, dig? The surgeon is a single father, having lost his wife to a tragic summer. The movie is set in Finland, so it’s possible the drowned woman didn’t quite understand a lake that wasn’t frozen over. Years later, Juha (Pekka Strang, the Finnish Stephan Merchant) has become “cool dad,” letting his teenage daughter get a tongue stud for her birthday.
Ah, but below the combo tattoo/piercing parlor, a dungeon of sexual pleasure/humiliation awaits. Juha lets curiosity get the better of him –dude, cats are the curious ones, not dogs—and discovers leather clad mistress Mona (Krista Kosonen). She specializes in discipline, the kind you only get when you’re on all fours, wearing a dog collar, and completely naked, because, you know, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. It’s worth note that as a single guy, Juha was already into panty-muzzle gratification, but this scene brings him to new levels of sexual titillation.
It takes a few hours for Juha to work up the nerve to call for an appointment, which must be Hell for your average Finn, but once he’s there, he’s THERE. Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is essentially a movie about addiction. Juha is not only obsessed with a-typical sexual gratification, he also desires asphyxiation during these periods because the lack-of-oxygen during his canine sessions allows him to hallucinate about his late wife. Yeah, this is a whole world of f***ed up and I haven’t even gotten to the part where the obsession starts affecting his job, health, and family, nor the part where Juha is truly falling for Mona.
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants explores sexual “deviance,” whatever that is, in an oddly mature fashion. We see the game as Juha does, with fresh eyes and fascinated curiosity, but we don’t judge it. Human sexuality is a very complicated subject and gawking at whips at chains like a young boy discovering his first Playboy does nothing to help the conversation. This is exactly the film that Fifty Shades of Grey should have been. The costumes, toys, and mechanics of sexuality are not presented as the titter-giggle pinnacle of risqué and “aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Rather, this is a mature look at two people who cannot relate sexually through standard intercourse. We like to pretend this is perversion and extremely uncommon, but I don’t think either of those things are true.
American art often ridicules the diverse beast that is human sexuality, almost always portraying the slightest deviation from our artificially imposed “norms” as something to stare and point at, then attack. As a result, we Americans are forever doomed to be the culture that can’t express sex in words but has no problem expressing sexuality on the rifle range. I’m sorry one has to go to film festivals to see movies like this.
There’s a few things about sex I don’t foller
I get why you scream and/or holler
But then it gets blurry
If I’m not a “furry”
Then why am I wearing a dog collar?
Not Rated [Read: A whole lotta R], 105 Minutes
Director: J.-P. Valkeapää, dude, is that a hyphen or a minus sign?
Writer: Juhana Lumme, J.-P. Valkeapää
Genre: Movies you can’t sell to Americans
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The sexually mature
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Mike Pence
