The shirtless
Jan temps Elsa and she gently pushes him to his knees, where he commences to
kiss her shoes. Elsa stops him and reminds him that she did not give him
permission to do that. Jan seizes on her rebuke and suggests that perhaps she
should punish him. Unable to resist him any longer, Elsa gives in to his
request and pulls down his pants. She proceeds to administer a bare hand
spanking. Elsa enjoys it, but she stops herself after only a half dozen mild
swats.
Elsa is by no
means a classic femme fatale. She is 50 and looks every day of it, not
unattractive, but a bit hard, and a bit weary. Jan is a good-looking boy-man.
There is nothing particularly glamorous about their game. They are not tricked
out in fetish gear or surrounded by props. Yet, the game continues. The
attraction between them grows.
The next time
they meet at the abandon building, Elsa has Jan undress for her. In classic
CFNM style, fully clothed Elsa sits in a chair as Jan strips. Elsa views his
naked body where she proclaims “You’re beautiful!” Next she orders him to “walk
across the room, I want to watch you.” (How many times have I seen similar
scenes in movies where an older man has a young girl parade for him? This was a
nice role reversal).
As Jan walks
around for her, Elsa surprises him by jumping up, grabbing him, forcing his
hands behind his back while she caresses his naked body. Then she ties his
hands with her scarf and lays him on the cold floor where she proceeds to chain
him there, utilizing a chain hanging from the wall of the abandon old
manufacturing plant.
Elsa leaves
Jan there, naked and vulnerable. She merely goes outside to smoke a cigarette
but he fears she has truly left abandoned him, all alone in the dark. Her mind
games work as Jan begins to cry. Elsa rushes in and holds him in her arms,
comforting him.
The next time
we see them together, Jan is at Elsa’s house, naked, on all fours with a collar
around his neck and a leash attached. Elsa asks him where he got the collar and
leash. Jan says he got it from a sex shop but when Elsa questions how a sixteen
year-old bought the items at a sex shop, he refuses to answer. Thus Elsa
answers for him and tells him that she suspects he got the items at a local pet
shop.
Elsa removes
the dog collar from his neck and replaces it with a soft ribbon. She tightens
the ribbon and draws him close to her, bringing him in close enough where he
wants to kiss her but she pushes him away, than brings him in again, teasing
him but denying him.
Elsa pushes
Jan to his knees where she unbuttons her shirt, allowing Jan to kiss the
stomach of a fifty-year-old woman. Although he wants to explore more of her
body, she denies him. Instead, she gets her ruler and guides Jan to her couch,
which he kneels upon as she spreads his hands against the wall, his bare ass
exposed to her.
Elsa
administers four moderate blows to his ass. Caught up in the excitement, she
reaches her hand inside her pants and begins to finger herself. Jan turns
around, at which she rebukes him and orders him to “look straight ahead”.
Elsa
continues with his discipline, administering a dozen hard whacks with the
ruler, almost brining Jan to tears. Sensing his suffering, Elsa stops his
punishment and takes the naked teen in her arms and comforts him.
Elsa asks
Jan, “Where are you?” He replies “Inside of myself”. Elsa follows up with “What
do you feel there?” but before he can answer, Elsa’s daughter knocks on the
door, sending them scrambling and breaking the energy of their power exchange.
The
subsequent occasion when Elsa punishes Jan is when they meet again at the
abandon building. She takes him underneath and has him lay against the slanted
foundation wall. Elsa whips him with a leather belt, giving Jan twenty-four
hard thrashings. When she is finished, they once again embrace and she nurtures
him.
The severity
keeps increasing. It began as a bare hand spanking, then a moderate spanking
with a ruler and now the relationship has progressed where she is whipping him
rather severely.
Jan’s becomes
dependent of Elsa, and she develops feelings for him. They briefly kiss.
However, their secret relationship is altered when Jan gets beat up on the
street by troubled youth. Elsa is waiting for him at their usual rendezvous,
the abandon building. When he doesn’t show she goes looking for him and finds
him injured on the street.
Once Jan is
released from the hospital, Elsa takes him and they check into a hotel so they
can be alone. What transpires there is uncertain but we see them in bed
together, Elsa clothed, caressing and nurturing Jan. He tells her of his
dreams, how he wants to run off with her to Brazil. She seems to be accepting
of the idea, although she doesn’t respond verbally.
Elsa falls
asleep and Jan gets up, and appears to rob her purse. She awakens to find him
gone. Elsa goes looking for him. Once she finds him, he shows her what he
bought with her money. Jan has purchased two plane tickets to Brazil. Reality
sets in and Elsa knows the fantasy must end, therefore she tells Jan that he
needs to go to a group home, where he can deal with his emotional hurts.
Working with his social worker, Elsa secures a place for Jan. Elsa returns to
reality and her relationship with her husband. End of story.
I got my copy
of this DVD from Amazon. It is a German film therefore I set the subtitles to
English. The film appears to be low-budget and it is shot in grainy
black-and-white.
What transpires
between Elsa and Jan isn't just about their D&S interactions. They fulfill
a need within each other. Elsa is a disciplinarian and Jan has a desire to be
punished, perhaps for the transgressions of his young life but more likely
because he has masochistic tendencies. At multiple times he tries to kiss
Elsa’s shoes while he is attempting to seduce her into disciplining him. And
you can sense that Jan would love to sexually pleasure Elsa, if she would only
give him the green light, which she never does.
Elsa
disciplines Jan but she never hurts him, in fact, she wants to take him “inside
of himself” (subspace), a place Jan is eager to go. It is hard to know Elsa’s
motives but she is nurturing with Jan after each punishment session, which says
that she hopes Jan can find inner healing when he goes “inside of himself”.
Through this
relationship, Elsa discovers a hidden part of her own sexuality. She knows her actions
veer outside of socially (and in this case, legally) acceptable behavior, and
she never allows her sexual desires to cross the moral line which she has set.
She never permits herself to have sexual relations with Jan, although one can
assume that she thinks about him in her fantasies. She stopped herself the one
time she was fingering herself when spanking Jan, yet I would imagine she spent
many evenings fingering herself when she was alone, as she replayed her
discipline sessions with Jan within her mind.
However, all
of this is conjecture and my interpretation. Director Angelina Maccarone does
not dissect the relationship between Elsa and Jan. There are no flashbacks or
confessionals that examine the motivations or even the feelings of these
characters. Maccarone presents her story in a direct, non-exploitative way and
asks us to watch as the events play out. We are allowed to draw our own
conclusions, and we learn about these people through their actions and
sometimes contradictory reactions.
I read where Maren
Kroymann is a well-known as a stand-up comedian in Germany. Both Kroymann and Ullmann
give solid performances. This is not a
great film and it is not salacious or even blatantly Femdom. However, I suspect
if you have a spanking fetish, or are into CFNM, or older women dominating
younger men, you might enjoy it, especially the four brief scenes where Elsa
disciplines Jan.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Note – “Verfolgt”
has been screened in English-speaking territories under the titles “Hounded’
and “Punish Me”.