She’s Lost Control

🧠 Plot Summary

Anja Marquardt’s She’s Lost Control (2014) is a psychological drama with gradual build-up. It features Ronah (Brooke Bloom), a behavioral therapist who works as a sexual surrogate—a role where she assists patients with intimacy challenges through structured therapeutic touch, within the confines of a sterile and isolating New York City setting.

Ronah’s character archetype is meticulous and emotionally reserved. While she is deeply committed to her role, she maintains rigid professional boundaries. Ronah attempts to ‘therapize’ social dysfunction in emotionally or physically withdrawn clients through closeness. Her work demands a performance of warmth while maintaining emotional detachment, a balancing act that becomes harder when she begins to see Johnny (Marc Menchaca), a new client.

Johnny is a deeply traumatized and enraged, volatile and unpredictable man. Clinical contact, initially so tame, soon escalates to a furious, blurred emotional territory. In trying to help him, Ronah starts losing herself to her more vulnerable erratic professional persona as the layers of control she constructed to protect herself peel away. The professional healing she imposes begins revealing scars rather than soothing.

At the same time, Ronah struggles with her own issues—apartment plumbing issues, fertility treatments, and growing feelings of isolation. Her boundaries shift and dissolve with Johnny and within herself culminating in a disturbing violent climax that completely removes the veneer of emotional control.

Feeling physically and emotionally depleted, professionally unmoored, and rendered unidentifiable, Ronah’s ambiguity spills over to the film’s conclusion. She’s Lost Control is not a conventional storyline but rather a disturbing exploration of disconnection, limits, and the body as a site of conflict in the pursuit of closeness and dominance.

🎭 Characters and Performances

Ronah (Brooke Bloom)

Finding the right balance of empathy and self-protection renders Ronah a character torn apart and Bloom gives a captivating performance to match. Brooke captures Ronah’s emotional descent through subtle fragility. The physicality with which Bloom holds tension transforms into a distinct form of expression reflective of Ronah’s unsayable struggle.

Johnny (Marc Menchaca)

Menchaca’s portrayal is both sympathetic and frightening. He oscillates from childish vulnerability to menacing aggression, rendering his character unpredictable. Johnny emerges as a deeply troubling figure throughout the film, a construct of unsettling complexity made possible by Menchaca’s simultaneous evocation of sympathy and fear.

Supporting Roles

Fragments of Ronah’s emotional landscape, including her doctor, clients, and estranged brother, illustrate her pervasive emotional disconnect. While these performances are subtle, they contribute towards the film’s motifs of quiet disintegration and constructive decay.

🎥 Themes and Symbolism

Intimacy vs. Control

In stark contrast to her clinical detachment, Ronah, as a services manager, is required to be intimately close to clients. In a cruel twist, her intended attempts to heal inflicts deeper wounds. She’s Lost Control speaks volumes to her disintegration amidst emotional chaos.

Isolation in Modern Urban Life

Set in an indifferent New York, the film expresses Ronah’s disconnection using sparse interiors, low lighting, and lengthy silences. Her bleak, uninviting, detached clinics and sessions are simultaneously clinical—reflecting her emotionally arid life.

Female Autonomy and Vulnerability

The film underscores how female bodies are paradoxically regarded as tools for employment and then targeted for control. Women are expected to provide emotional labor, women lack the safety and control that society gives them.

Boundaries and Consent

A recurring motif is the delicate boundary between the professional sphere and personal trespass. The story illustrates systematically how these boundaries are transgressed, followed by an erasure that results in a permanent imprint.

🎞️ Cinematic Style and Atmosphere

Anja Marquardt’s directorial style is sparse yet purposeful. She emphasizes close framing, prolonged shots, and an almost surgical dispassion. The cinematography of Zack Galler employs muted color palettes—sterile whites, cadaverous blues, and ashen city grays—to evoke emotional detachment. Editing is slow and systematic, reinforcing discomfort in every scene.

The film’s sound design is subtle yet incisive, directing focus to breath, dripping water, and rustling sheets to create intimacy and discomfort simultaneously. When the score does appear, it is subdued and oppressive, heightening mental strain instead of slipping into melodrama.

⭐ Reception and Interpretation

Critical Response

She’s Lost Control premiered at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, earning acclaim for the originality of its concept and the grounded nature of its execution. Critics praised Brooke Bloom’s performance and Marquardt’s unyielding direction, noting the film’s resemblance to the cool, analytical treatment of sexuality and human connectivity found in Shame and Under the Skin.

Awards and Recognition

Winner: CICAE Art Cinema Award at Berlin International Film Festival

Nominated: Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards

Selected for the SXSW and New Directors/New Films Festivals

Audience Reactions

As thought-provoking as the film is, it demands emotional work from the viewer. While some praised the film’s subtle intensity and psychological realism, others were annoyed by the slow pacing and ambiguity.

🔍 Key Insights for Viewers

This film is psychological in nature, not erotic; the intimacy portrayed is discomfortingly clinical.

The title encases both a diagnosis and a plot—degenerative loss of control is gradual, devastating, and symbolic.

The film offers no easy resolutions. It’s meant to provoke thought rather than provide solace.

✅ Verdict

She’s Lost Control (2014) is a haunting, cerebral character study about emotional labor, blurred boundaries, and the cost of vulnerability. Anchored by Brooke Bloom’s transformative performance and Anja Marquardt’s precise direction, it lingers; quiet yet unsettling, painfully intimate, and disturbingly relevant in its testimony of how one gives of oneself in the name of healing. A chilling modern fable about the price of emotional exposure in a detached world.