First-person nonfiction directors usually employ their sensi bilities as instruments of illumination, in concert with the paraphernalia of lenses, lights, and microphones. In the 1995 Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood Madam he often includes scenes in which subjects tell him how obnoxious, untrustworthy, and dumb he is. In Fetishes Broomfield invades the demimonde of dominatrix Mistress Raven, who runs a pricey Manhattan parlor, Pandora's Box, catering to fetishists. Making a sideshow of his own obtuseness, he manages to miss the story. But Broomfield just doesn't get it.
Fetishes simply peddles an unobservant voyeurism.
Outsiders to the fetish scene may appreciate the expertly appointed sets at Pandora's Box, which include a shadowy medieval dungeon and an equally scary, gleamingly bright room evoking a medical clinic. However, Broomfield's tour remains painfully superficial. If the sexual subculture he visits is predicated on surfaces, that's not an insight he intends to convey. The opportunistic, leering Fetishes never aims for any empathy or judgment, just this grossed-out grin. Yet Soldier Girls similarly betrays no special take on the cruelty of drill sergeants or the pain endured by army recruits.