There will be spoilers.

A college professor teaches a creative writing class. He has published one promising novel and is a minor celebrity.

One lady in his class starts giving him chapters of a novel she’s writing. To his surprise it’s a good novel.

She also tells him his novel saved her life, flattering his ego of course. Saying other things like that she’s read it a million times.

She convinces him to give her a ride to a store to get a new pc. She gets him to go up to her room, there she loses her temper over her malfunctioning printer and he comforts her by putting her hand on her shoulder. She pulls it down towards her breast. Something he resists at first. Then she practically jumps his bones. As soon as they start having sex his tooth breaks, so they stop. That’s all the sexual intimacy that ever takes place between them.

She convinces him to show her manuscript to his editor. He reluctantly complies. Throughout the movie it’s made clear that he honestly likes her work. The editor doesn’t want to take a look at it.

She claims he didn’t try hard enough. And she says the awful thing that she only wanted to have sex with him so he would support her work.

She accuses him of sexual harrassment.

She is believed – of course – and he loses everything.

And her manuscript gets published because his editor did decide to takr a look at and gave her a contract. So the professor was correct and the writing was good.

I went to bed more scared than after watching any horror movie.

I spend most of my waking moments with women. Either as their therapist or as their teacher. I get to know almost all of them very well, perhaps better than their husbands, boyfriends, family or best friends.

I would never do anything remotely sexual with a therapy client. A wall goes up immediately. I have a whole arsenal of ways to not act on sexual attraction which I activate with therapy clients, because I know sex between therapy and clients always fucks up the client in more ways than you can imagine.

With adult students there is a different dynamic, I don’t feel like there would be a problem if it involves two consulting adults and I know I would never touch a woman who doesn’t want to be touched and I certainly would not accept doing a woman any favors so she would agree to let me get into her pants, hell, am so shy and insecure that a woman who wants to be touched by me in a sexual way better carry a huge green light and a sign: ‘Please get into my pants, I will not press charges.’

So this movie terrified me.

To make matters worse, I could relate to the main character because:

– he writes

– his father killed himself

– he kinda has the same attitude towards teaching I have

– he’s struggling to write a novel

– he supports and defends talent when he sees it

– he’s clearly looking for some meaningful, deeper connection and not sex for the sake of sex

And it’s one of those few movies where an unlikeable villain gets away with everything.

That makes it quite a unique movie.

It’s the kind of movie that is not a pleasure to watch, but is great to watch in school to spark debate.