Fetishes

In Nick Broomfield's fascinating Fetishes, the British documentarian films at New York's Pandora's Box, a very upscale S&Mparlor ($175 and way beyond for a session). Broomfield, an amiable voyeur around brassy women acting wickedly (he's done documentaries about Heidi Fleiss and Margaret Thatcher), takes his camera into all kinds of client sessions, in which Wall Street men pay handsomely to crawl around like leashed dogs, wear suffocating rubber, have their butts whipped red, dress like little girls, swallow lit cigarettes, or have their faces flushed in a dirty toilet.

When they allow it, Broomfield interviews these masochists, including the bizarre potential serial killer whose head sits happily in the commode. There are also several female clients, a "slave" who hangs about to be spanked, and a professional Submissive who, on her day off from being caned by her male clients, pays to be brutally whipped by the gals of Pandora's Box.

Is it a healthy life being a dominatrix? Those here are between relationships. Several mistresses surf the Net for boyfriends. One shares a bed with a giant iguana. "He's my man," she says, just before the jealous creature leaps and bites Broomfield's cameraman. At the Avon Friday and Saturday at midnight.

-- Gerald Peary