Review of A Wicked Eden (2021 Film):

A Wicked Eden provides a rare window into the lives of the people who make niche fetish internet pornography for a living. It calls to mind Nick Bloomfield’s 1996 documentary, Fetishes, but while that movie never had much more to say than “man, some people get off to some weird stuff”, Eden does a much better job of humanising the people who inhabit its world.

Its nuance, tact and empathy help make it a part of the vanguard that the current war on sex work has sadly made necessary, and mean it’s never merely salacious and disposable (not that there’s anything wrong with salacious and disposable). That war on sex work, waged by far-right politicians bowing to pressure from religious groups is highlighted in the documentary, but it’s not so much a call to arms as a call for compassion.

The trials and tribulations of world-renowned dominatrix, Goddess Alexandra Snow give the movie its narrative spine. It’s through her story that the viewer is slowly immersed into the wild, messy, sometimes confusing world of femdom, findom, kink, fetishes and adult entertainment.

The film takes a refreshingly measured, judgement-free approach to its subject matter. It doesn’t pretend fetishes aren’t weird, because it knows that they are. It just makes clear that there’s nothing wrong with being weird. It doesn’t pretend that sex work isn’t without its risks or doesn’t have a dark underbelly. It just makes clear that sex work can be lucrative, liberating, empowering and fun.

Most of all, it makes clear that the people involved in sex work and porn, from the people who make it to the people who watch it, are just that; people. As the movie’s de facto lead character, Goddess Snow is intelligent, hardworking, confident, compassionate, and at times, vulnerable. She is a likeable lead, and for a documentary like this, that’s important. But the story isn’t hers alone.