Review of Cléo Dubois' Videos:
The Pain Game and Tie Me Up!

  
Cléo 's Videos: "Tie Me Up!" and award winning "The Pain Game" 

By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

Purchase Cleo's Videos: "Tie Me Up!" and award winning "The Pain Game" at: http://www.sm-arts.com

Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Cléo Dubois

It's midnight, and a few of my friends of the BDSM persuasion and I are gathered around the TV, watching what would be the first BDSM video I've ever seen. The picture is on the grainy side, and although it's in color, the colors are gray. In a wide shot of a room, a man encased like a leather sausage holds a woman over his lap. She's wearing a very short skirt of course, and a distracted expression. Another woman stands to the side, her eyes wandering, possibly in pursuit of something more entertaining. The man's arm goes up and down, up and down, and sometimes the girl over his lap says "ow!" This goes on for a long time.

It wasn't long before I slipped away to the buffet table where I focused my attentions on bacon-wrapped scallops and gossip with another escapee. For all the passion and sexuality that this video expressed,  I could have been that woman standing by, hoping for something more entertaining.

After such a depressing introduction to BDSM videos, it is with great pleasure that I share with you how much fun I had watching Cleo Dubois' videos "The Pain Game" and "Tie Me Up." I figured Cleo's videos would be a higher caliber if only because Cleo herself is a higher caliber. She is a BDSM Educator, maker of educational/play BDSM videos, and Teacher of the BDSM arts. Her Academy of SM Arts, created in 1995, offers bondage and SM training both privately to couples and publicly at leather venues."

Her first documentary film, "The Pain Game," toured alternative film festivals nationwide and abroad after popular screenings at the San Francisco Frameline Film Festival 2001, LadyFest 2002, the 2nd Annual S/M Film Festival in New York and Festival de l'Etrange in Paris. It received an award from the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality. In more practical terms as my friend Gary Switch (Contributing Editor to Prometheus Magazine) puts it: "The Pain Game got a 12 on my peter-meter." Her second video "Tie Me Up," has also been received with enthusiasm. It's a hands-on bondage video with lots of hot scenes and clear explanations about the bondage.

Glamour and awards are nice, but what really wrenched me away from the bacon-wrapped scallops was  the very real depiction of BDSM. Oh yes, I was squirming in the juiciest of ways watching Cleo tie up, tease, whip, and torture her female and male submissives. My soul flew with them as they explored  a spiritual space, with Cleo acting as  Shaman in taking her submissives from this mundane life to the exquisite place of subspace.

From negotiation to intense play to aftercare, the scenes in Cleo's well-equipped dungeon were the genuine article. For the educational aspect, she included parts of an interview explaining what and how she did what she did for each scene. Best of all, the videos were lovely to watch from beginning to end, with good lighting, clear audio, and close ups of the juicy parts. I'm only sorry that it wasn't Cleo's videos that busted my video cherry, but at least now I've got something in the library I can watch anytime I want to fly.

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Sensuous Sadie is a BDSM columnist and edits SCENEsubmissions, a free e-newsletter. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com.  Sadie believes the universe is abundant  and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright July 2002.