“Blind Passion” asks a very interesting question: Why don’t blind men have strip clubs? I’ve never spent much time contemplating the argument, but apparently writer/director Shannon Shea has.
Told in documentary style, “Blind Passion” examines Gary and Art’s business venture to open up a strip club for the blind after hours in their Simi Valley auto repair shop. The catch is the girls don’t really strip. It’s all a clever ruse since the customers can’t see them anyway.
The film opens with an interview with Kelli, a cute blond performer who we soon learn is pregnant. Another “stripper” is Linda, a bitter feminist and ex-Starbucks employee who uses a watermelon to fake a lap dance. Other methods of deceit to these blind patrons include water balloons dangled on them to simulate breasts and spraying themselves with garlic and olive oil when they’re playing Italian strippers.
Overall, “Blind Passion” is a one-shot joke that takes a little too long to tell. Also, it crosses the line of good taste by poking too much fun of blind people, which is only funny in small doses. Bill Cosby, in fact, once did a bit on the Tonight Show about how blind people aren’t funny (in fact, they are amazing how they manage to live so easily in mainstream society), but instead people who can see but can’t manage to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom in the middle of the night without bumping into walls and tripping over furniture.
Not to sound overly PC, but with this in mind, the best scenes are the ones that make Gary and Art look like buffoons, including their “test” to make sure all patrons are really blind – which features Art dancing around in a tutu in front of everyone waiting to get in the club. Director Shannon Shea plays Art, so you gotta give the guy credit for humiliating himself more than anyone else in his own film.
