"Verfolgt" (also goes by "Punish Me" and "Hounded")

Directed by Angelina Maccarone

Starring:  Maren Kroymann,

Kostja Ullmann,

Markus Voellenklee,

Stephanie Charlotta Koetz

Released: 2006

Length: 85 minutes

 

My brief encounter on Halloween night with a college-aged submissive male wasn’t the first time I’ve dominated (or been sexually intimate) with a male young enough to be my son. There was the time I attended a May/December Society social. I had a brief encounter with a young twenty-something male where I was intimate with him on a small scale, although it was mostly flirting, kissing and touching. You can read about it here.

Then there was the time I went out with my sisters and met a young guy at a club who was a friend of my niece. Those that read my blog back in those days know that I ended up seeing this young man a few times, including New Year’s Eve that year. I never dominated him physically but I dominated the relationship as I was more experienced both sexually and socially. There was a real feeling of power in having my way with such a young man. He still e-mails me from time to time.

 

My first D&S encounter with a much younger male was back in my ClubFEM days. After our original group broke up when the host couple moved away and we had to search for a new venue, I made several attempts of restarting the group. One time this new couple offered their home but they already had several other people that wanted to attend. We merged the two groups one night. Previously my group was all Femdom couples but this new group allowed singles to attend.

 

We had an age-limit of 21 and this one young man showed up and if he made the limit, he barely made the limit. He knew one of the younger Dommes from a DC area BDSM club and she invited him. In the course of the evening, he made his way over to me and complemented me on my leather outfit. We talked and I learned that he liked to be spanked.

 

I had granted another Mistress permission to play with my hubby. She had just learned how to do Shibari rope bondage and wanted to use James to practice on. This was a very lengthy procedure so he was “tied up” as I was interacting with my young submissive. He was very cute and most respectful therefore I offered to administer an over-the-lap spanking with my bare hands and a wooden paddle.

 

I must confess that I got an extra thrill in spanking his young bottom. I don’t know if it was our age difference or the fact that others were watching, but I definitely “got into it” and so did he. Being a cougar is one thing, but that involves sex with a much young man. But what about dominating a much younger man? Although he was 21 (or so he said, he looked as if he could have been 18 or 19 with a fake ID) and I was around 40 at the time, I could definitely see how an older woman could be drawn into D&S relationship with a young, inexperienced male, who was eager to be trained.

 

That brings me to a movie I reviewed back in 2008. Originally titled “Verfolgt” (Pursued), this German black and white film tells the story of a middle-aged woman who enters into a D&S relationship with a 16-year-old boy.

 

Elsa Seifert (Maren Kroymann) is a woman nearing her fiftieth birthday who has a career as a probation officer and works with troubled teenagers. Elsa is married to Raimar (Markus Voellenklee), who runs an auto repair shop, and they have a comfortable relationship, with one grown daughter who lives on her own.

 

Elsa is assigned to look into the case of Jan Winkler (Kostja Ullmann), who is only sixteen but has a precocious criminal record and has just been released from a juvenile detention facility. We see him on the basketball court get knocked over for not passing the ball. In the shower, he lovingly strokes the bruise on his back, which is our first clue that Jan is a masochist.

 

He gets saucy with his probation officer, to the point where she finally slaps him across the face. He likes it and, in a surprise to her, she does too. To her surprise, Jan begins stopping by her home, sometimes bringing her gifts.

Elsa persuades Raimar to give Jan a part time job at his shop to keep the boy occupied, but this does little to blunt Jan's zeal, and Raimar strikes up a friendship with him. One night, aware that Jan is watching from the sidewalk, Elsa leaves the curtains open as she makes love with her husband, which becomes the first step in an erotic dance with her young client.

 

Elsa quickly discovers Jan is a masochist with a deep need to be disciplined. He follows her around, offering himself to her, telling her she can do what she wants with him. Jan's combination of vulnerability and persistence touches something in Elsa, and she finally agrees to meet him. They go to an abandoned building.

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”.