The hypnotic tick-tock of her pendulum leg counts seconds while stopping time. Sex has two sides. You’ll see these two sides of sex in a film about the two sides of Man, Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde (1931). (Pronounced Jee-kill)
Dr. Jekyll lays a tender hand on Ivy’s thigh, treating her as patient when he suggests she not wear her garters so tight as it will impede circulation. But sometimes we want our flow impeded.
If you want me in stockings, then tie your knuckles in a knot around my thigh to hold up the silk in the absence of elastic.
A hand on my thigh, midway between knee and cunt, is enough to alter my state of my mind from logic to lust.
As Dr. Jekyll releases his hand, Ivy places it back on her expanse of skin. She is the agent of her own possibility. Softness is not exclusive to submission; softness is a decision.
Ivy looks directly into the camera and we are to believe she is speaking to Dr. Jekyll, but the vantage point makes no sense; she is looking at us. The director fills Jekyll’s skin with our voyeurism, and we watch as Ivy takes off her stockings for our enticement.
Her playful flirting is powerful and I’ve imagined myself with the hard, Mr. Hyde-side of sex, laying Ivy back on the bed, one of my hands at her throat and the other at the finale of her thigh.
Instead she is the one with agency, embracing the doctor as if he’s the conventional sense of woman. He allows it, his weight filling her embrace. From held to hold, both lovers are equal.
But when Dr. Jekyll turns to Mr. Hyde, he is crude and rough while Ivy is tense and timid. The only power she has is her patience in waiting for him to leave. Mr. Hyde is staccato of movement, a praying Mantis on attack. He is staccato of mouth, making lace of her flesh with his vile tongue. Ivy is tossed to and fro, but a tiny ship on Hyde’s raging waves.
And then he grabs her back in his gaol embrace, constantly closing the space she creates. He reference her garters again and nips at her skin with a hard, insouciant hand before concealing her body with his. She will be raped, but we are told to see it as ravage.
Hyde is the extremist end of compulsive fits of erotic desire where we fail to notice the other as anything beyond object. The glazed over look people have when their whole being is Want, and our whole being is Wanted.
Hyde’s Want turns to Hunt and Ivy exists only as Fulfillment.
We are not black and white duality, we are not all Jekyll or Hyde, we are Seek and Find. Allow and Let.
Hardness can turn soft as quick as soft can turn hard, not just in the tumescence of cock but in the gaze of an eye.