The Australian film The Big Dog by writer-director Dane McCusker shares a darkly intense view of a BDSM relationship that goes sideways. Richard Morgan (Julian Garner) is a married stockbroker who is also secretly submissive to a financial dominatrix (FINDOM) whom he calls Mistress Paige (Asha Boswarva). Richard has clearly done well for himself and has a nice life with his wife Kelly (Felicity Price) and adult son Sam (Michael Monk). But, somewhere along the line, Richard’s relationship with his money takes on a sexual component, and Mistress Paige explores that with him by providing the ostensibly artificial, exciting risk of him having to humiliate himself to have access to his own cash.
The relationship with Mistress Paige is what gets Richard’s pulse-pounding, but it seems the boundary terms of their arrangement are unclear. He has actually, foolishly, given her complete control of his cash, thinking she’d spend enough to make it exciting, but the fact is that she does not understand the limits. The bottom falls out for Richard when he finds that Mistress Paige has spent every dime, including the earmarked $80K he’d set aside for a new car for Sam.
Finding sympathy for these characters with “first-world” problems requires a viewer to dig deep. Richard, the titular “Big Dog,” is a dismissive jerk to his family. His son, Sam, is having a severe emotional breakdown and considers himself an “incel,” while his wife, Kelly, seems to be an ineffectual stiff with no personality of her own. When he learns that Paige has wiped out his cash, Richard must face real life, not fantasy, humiliation of owning up to what he’s done. Paige feels terrible for his wife and son.
“…Mistress Paige has spent every dime…”
By way of the personal trauma Richard inflicts, The Big Dog addresses societal issues around class and wealth disparity. Paige is a middle-class young woman of her time, augmenting her finances with online sex work that meshes with her feminist ideals, while Richard assumes his position of wealth makes him untouchable.
When Kelly realizes something is severely wrong, she starts to hold Richard responsible for his behavior. She has convinced herself that he has a gambling addiction and won’t believe him when he says otherwise. Then, when she hacks into his computer and learns the truth, she finds it so much worse than gambling. The pressure cooker reaches maximum intensity when all of the involved parties wind up in a living room together, having the most uncomfortable conversation imaginable.
One would like to think that this premise stretches suspension of disbelief… it seems wildly unlikely that a finance professional would be so daft as to turn his full cash reserve over to a young pro domme he only knows online. But poorly managed fetishes and addictions cause ruination daily, and the situation is not so far-fetched as all that. McCusker flirts with dark comedy but keeps the screws turned so tight that laughing is painful as we watch Richard and everyone he’s damaged squirm under the pressure. The performances from Garner, Price, and Boswarva solidly lock this strained dumpster fire onto rails as the story careens toward destruction. The Big Dog is a fascinating, dark journey into privilege and hubris instigated by a corrupt, wealthy man.
"…a fascinating,dark journey into privilege and hubris..."
