Grief will do wicked things to the body. It can take years of mourning, and perhaps plenty of booze, drugs, and sex, in no particular order, to find oneself. With Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, Finnish director J.P. Valkeapää combs the misunderstood underworld of BDSM to tell a tale as delightfully erotic as it is strangely poetic – and he does so with a keen eye for compassion. “It was necessary and important to show the empathetic nature that is an important part of [BDSM]: The strong and genuine bond between people it creates,” says Valkeapää in press materials. “The way trust was so central to it. How people could venture deeply into their fantasies and obsessions, in a spirit of total openness and psychological nakedness.”

Valkeapää’s world is etched with misery from the start. Introverted cardiac surgeon Juha, played by Pekka Strang (Kites Over Helsinki, Tom of Finland), undergoes the tragedy of his life when his wife drowns at their lake house. Years later, Juha remains haunted by her memory and forever frozen in time. His mind and body have grown numb to the outside world, a ghost of his former self, and nothing can quite reignite his spark to live again. Every relationship, including with his daughter Elli (Ilona Huht), is nearly snuffed out.

It’s a chance encounter with a seductive dominatrix named Mona (Krista Kosonen, known for Moska, The Midwife, and Toisen Kanssa) that sends him careening down a path of pleasure, pain, and enlightenment. Asphyxiation becomes key to his journey, and as his obsession grows, moral lines are both skewed and blurred completely. He falls further away from reality, always fixating on recovering whatever piece of himself is still missing, as he teeters between life and death, and Mona draws closer – ensnared in a new kind of thrill. Their relationship is as a leather-bound whip, lashing from sheer desperation to physical exhaustion to emotional catharsis. They each play their part, and in one particularly heart-pounding scene, in which Juha might have pushed too far over the edge, the viewer finds themselves seduced by such dark exploits, as well.

Valkeapää plays on the raw human need to feel, and he lets you feel everything quite deeply. Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is not your stock psychological thriller – but be sure it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. He digs a 20-foot trench and tosses you into a muddy tank of gritty storytelling, uncomfortable BDSM sequences, and rich character work. Kosonen’s Mona is an endearing creature of the night (also a caregiver by day), and her heart pulsates as vibrantly as the neon signs hanging above the BDSM playpen. Strang deals out an equally weighted performance, and together, they pull you into a very real, grounded, and enticing world.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants lingers on the brain. In its final moments, Valkeapää demonstrates there is still light at the end of a long, winding, treacherous tunnel.

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