Note: there is a spoiler in this about the movie "V For Vendetta." If you haven't seen it and are planning to do so, you might want to skip this posting.
Okay, I know it's gotten mixed reviews and I know the (totally delightful btw) Natalie Portman didn't quite manage to nail any (hers seems to vary) UK accent. But I loved this film and ended up seeing it twice (so far). No, there's no spanking in it -- though one senses that if the scenes with the corrupt bishop and the Lolita-dress Portman had been allowed to continue... Mmmm!
So here's a question to others of you that may have seen it. Did you find it hot? I mean the prison / interrogation scenes.
When I think harder about this, it isn't exactly that. Not exactly those prison and torture scenes (though I can see how someone would if that was their thing). But I've never really had prison fantasies. My institutional fantasies are about schools generally.
What I find almost irresistibly hot though is the idea -- the moment -- she finds out he did this to her, for her. Not as a punishment or test for having betrayed him (though she has done just that). But instead that this was all an elaborate test he made up to help her. That he was hurting her, starving and torturing because he loved her enough to want to make her stronger. Or let her find out her own strength.
O my God, yes. Nothing proves to me that someone cares about me more than knowing that they're willing to hurt me in order to somehow help me be better. That they care enough to try and save me. That's part of what the punishment side of this is all about for me. About someone caring for me that much.
This idea of being tested by pain, by fire and somehow proving myself is the crux of so many of the fantasies I've had since childhood. To see torture on the screen and then discover it was being staged, done to prove to her that she was really strong enough to do the right thing.
And that she falls in love with him for it or in spite of it, well, that makes it even more perfect.
Both times I've seen the film I've left the theaters feeling excited about the thought.
I wanted so badly to be her. Even if it meant having my hair shaved off.
As ever, such a strange girl.
