I was gonna write a whole thing about how I thought this movie was ok at best since I'm fundamentally of the opinion that people in current age trying to recreate 60s/70s vibes will inherently always blatantly feel like that rather than something organic and of it's time but I just read a whole ass snippet of Anna Billers mindbogglingly bad faux-feminist high school level theories and I have no clue what to think now.

Before reading her dumb shit, I figured this movie was an undercooked thesis on how sex cults promoting feminist ideals while being run by a guy that looks like a theatre teacher use "free love" as a new source of control over women's bodies in the sense that you are giving up one gendered prison for another one. There's also a lot of "all men secretly want sex with ideal girl unless they are a cop, i guess" stuff but I tried to think of it more as a bleeding in of bad politics rather than the conceit of the whole film. Like, wouldn't this be way better if it was more about Elaine being molded by her legitimately horrible abusive relationships with men and how it turned her into a sort of monster but noooooooooo it's gotta be some stupid shit about how it's ok to be abnormally skinny as long as a man didn't tell you to do that, or whatever. Like I guess the cults weird ideals on gender are actually 100% justified if the only difference was that they weren't led by a dude?

I think the production design is good, costumes are good, the music is there. Feels like a movie made in 2015 tho for sure, which I know won't win me any awards lol. The performances are also definitely way too "we're in a movie wink wink" for me to be interested in anyone at all except Trish maybe. Also everyone constantly makes nonsensical decisions. Everything rotates around themes rather than an actual plot which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that there is very much a narrative lol. I dunno anna billers dirty laundry that she herself gleefully airs aside, I don't really think this is all that great. The gender essentialism stuff made me feel uncomfortable but that was the added bonus to a movie that already comes off as whatever. not to mention it being a whole ass half hour too long for me. I'm still liking this on here because I laughed like 800 times at a movie that was clearly made by an insane person with some good ideas but mostly annoying ones (griff saying Elaine has BPD on the spot being reminiscent of how men historically have used psychology to oppress women etc etc counteracted by the fact that Elaine is addicted to fantasies and has murdered multiple people because they had misogynistic fantasies while they were taking a shit in a port-a-potty once 3 years ago at the county fair) gets points for Samantha Robinson being really pretty and having evil zoom in eyes