Using close-up and extreme close-up images in black-and-white. In Loving Memory romanti­cizes S & M icons in a manner similar to Ken­neth Anger's works. However, by an ambiguous use of gender — which sex is the uniformed character, which sex is the bondaged figure? — the film raises complex issues which are magnified by the use of the one 'performer' in both roles. This not only politicizes the film, raising issues of female sex­uality in the mariner of Liliana Cavani's Night Porter, but also advances beyond Cavani's dichotomy of the dominating male and the submissive female. (MK)