Stocking Stuffers (2001)
Stocking Stuffers reviewed by Demon
Angel Connell’s short film Stocking Stuffers, originally released in 2001, is a curious meditation on seduction, fetishism, and consumerism as depicted in a love triangle between a man, a woman, and the woman’s delicious pair of pantyhose-clad legs.
The movie is divided into two chapters, with the first, “Consuming The Commodities Of The Heart”, showing the man and woman engaging in playful verbal sparring as the man attempts to seduce the woman. As the movie unfolds, the man and woman’s exchange becomes secondary to the woman teasing the man with her long legs, draping her feet across his lap, and later pressing them into his face.
If this sounds fetishistic, well, it’s because it is. The film illustrates the way an object of sexual desire relates to a holistic human subject — whether that object be the legs of a woman or the actual fabric wrapping the legs. Somewhere beyond the object of desire exists the actual woman herself, but in a context of sexuality, subjectivity is readily eclipsed by desire.
This notion is further illuminated by chapter two, “The Heartfelt Commodification Of Consumption”, in which the woman advertises her sheer leggings in a series of three mock commercials for Sheek Pantyhose. In the final segment, the man asks the woman if she has an extra pair of Sheek available, suggesting that the object of desire has now been completely divorced from the woman herself; the pantyhose, not the woman, has become his source of attraction.
While the opening chapter dialogue in Stocking Stuffers seemed a bit too much, I found the overall movie strangely seductive, and couldn’t help but lust after the beautiful gams on display by the end of the picture. Shot beautifully on film, the movie reminded me of Kenneth Anger’s Kustom Kar Kommandos, another visually soothing meditation on object lust, in which a man in butthugging jeans lovingly buffs his car to perfection to the tune of Dream Lover.
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