Critic Reviews

Arnow’s poignant and original performance—refined in its awkwardness, exalted in its degradation, touched with grace in its rude self-presentation—is a double masterwork of acting and directing.

It’s the unique rhythm of the way that this film is written and cut that elevates it beyond a standard millennial malaise movie.

When watching The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed, the brilliant comedy from writer-director Joanna Arnow in which she also stars, both comedy and tragedy are expertly wielded in her hands.

It asks similar questions about millennial New York life as Girls. And its naturalism is straight out of mumblecore. Yet Arnow carves out her own style. But what is truly groundbreaking is her depiction of BDSM.

Joanna Arnow’s second feature is a symphony of ambient embarrassment, whose movements are structured around the various men with whom the protagonist, Ann (Arnow), has relationships of varying length and ambivalence. Within these movements, Arnow hits uncomfortable notes that range from cutting corporate indignities to the ritualized abjection of erotic humiliation.

It’s a wonderfully distinctive debut by Arnow, who lays it all out in both her script and performance.

The do’s, don’t’s and don’t-even-go-there’s of contemporary dating have long been standard fodder for US indie cinema, but they rarely get dissected quite so tartly, or with such weirdly impassive wit, as in The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed.

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Past beautifully observes how the ridiculous mundanities of being alive are some of the most difficult.

A portrait of millennial estrangement and discontent that, despite suffering from sporadic redundancy, strikes a raw cringe-comedy nerve.

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed lacks for drama in its portrayal of the quotidian realities of sexual kink, but Arnow’s voice is distinctive, shrewd, and spiky enough to keep it afloat.