“The last thing the world needs is another fake female orgasm,” Beatrice says to her therapist as she vents to her about her inability to authentically portray an orgasm for a film she’s shooting. Beatrice, as depicted by Dina Shihabi, is the protagonist of the film short for this month: Cinephile (2021), written and directed by Dre Ryan. As a character, she is very concerned with the optics of feminine desire but struggles to perform it. Pleasure is about surrender and she admits readily enough to her therapist (played by Stephanie Allynne, giving her best Gillian Anderson impersonation)  that surrender isn’t something she does well. Their conversation has palpable sensual overtones, as the therapist walks over to Beatrice to sit directly beside her before suggesting they do a grounding exercise that will “allow her to go back into her body”; the looks linger and the therapist seems to itch for an excuse to touch Beatrice, to lean into her space.

“For some people, pleasure is illicit, dangerous,” the therapist says as she urges Beatrice to lay on her back, her hands gripping the arches of Beatrice’s bare feet. Eventually, they kiss before Beatrice cums. The shot itself is fantastic: flashing light is reflected off of Beatrice’s face to communicate the intensity. Then we cut to the therapist back in her chair, “And that’s our time, hopefully, this helped.” Beatrice lingers as she puts on her Ray Bans, gliding off the high of her orgasm, and that is where I was hoping it’d end. A scene of intimacy and connection that allows Beatrice to reconnect her desire in a safe space, with another woman dedicated to her well-being. For me, the story of being enthralled by pleasure but unable to access it due to the inability to connect to one’s own body is a very real and familiar story. Needing to rely on someone you’ve built trust in to get you to a place where you can rejoice in your own surrender is also a familiar dynamic when it comes to love and sex.

But then we cut to a voice-over, Beatrice performing a poor mimicry of the release in what we assume is the scene she was struggling to depict. We zoom out to see the therapist watching it on her laptop. Beatrice comes in takes away the laptop, mouthing “You wanna fuck?” before breaking the fourth wall and blocking out the camera with her hand. The breaking of the fourth wall disrupts the narrative set forth. Instead of a soft shared moment of intimacy, it becomes less clear in its intention.  With the fourth wall break and the short’s direct relationship to film (I mean look at the title), the relationship between the therapist and Beatrice itself becomes a performance. Overall, I enjoyed the sensuality of the short but I was a bit lost on Ryan’s directorial intent.