Quebecois director Denis Côté is something of a cinematic explorer. Over the course of his 25-year career, he has established himself as one of Canada’s premier filmmakers despite not having a breakout arthouse hit. This may be because, for the most part, Côté has resisted falling into a signature style, preferring to treat each project as an opportunity to develop new cinematic approaches. He works in both feature-length and short form, fiction as well as documentary, and veers between multi-actor productions and single-character portraiture. Much like his international colleagues Nicolas Peréda and João Pedro Rodrigues, Côté is restless, going all in on a particular genre or approach and then, with the next film, doing something completely different. While other brand-name auteurs are much more easily pegged — all the better for festival berths and niche marketing — Côté has a divergent approach that one expects will be all the more impressive with historical hindsight.
If there is one fairly consistent aspect to Côté’s work, it is probably his fascination with socially marginal figures. In films like Carcasses (2009), Wilcox (2019), and Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013), the director has asked his viewers to focus our attention on people who live well outside the mainstream, both geographically and psychologically. His latest film, Paul, is a bit different in that its subject lives his life in the heart of Montreal but, with the help of the Internet, exists on the outskirts of broader society. As we learn early on, Paul has struggled for years with his weight and his personal appearance, as well as crippling depression. However, he finds his own salvation through semi-sexual servitude. Calling himself the Cleaning Simp, Paul volunteers himself for housework, cleaning the homes of various women who dominate him in a variety of different ways: bondage, spanking, service as a human ottoman, etc. But the heart of Paul’s personal improvement project is housework, washing windows and floors, scrubbing toilets and sinks, and other so-called menial tasks. As Paul says, he takes great pleasure in seeing dirty things and putting forth the effort to make them clean.
Paul alternates between observational documentary and media critique, since throughout the film Côté shows us the YouTube videos Paul makes for his Cleaning Simp channel. They are chipper and motivational, with Paul inviting his many followers to accompany him on his journey of greater fitness and personal growth. One of the key subtexts in Paul is the comparison of the like-and-subscribe tone of Paul’s social media presence with the slower, more arduous experiences he has with his different dommes. One of them rides him like a horse; another walks on his back in boots; still another straps him to a chair as she goes about her business, rehearsing with her bandmates. This last example is notable because we watch Paul gradually become uncomfortable with this scenario, his leather collar too tight and his mistress too distracted by other matters.
Up to this point, Paul just takes whatever the women are willing to give him, and so this moment, when Paul realizes he’s having bad “sex,” is a striking example of just how far he’s come in terms of self-respect and awareness of his own desires. As difficult as Paul can be to watch at times — personally, this writer has trouble seeing someone whipped onscreen, even if they are enjoying it — it’s also one of Côté’s most affirming, even uplifting films. Paul is both a human being and a media presence, and we see him use social media to craft and curate his own self-image in the process of getting out in the world and interacting with other people. The film is fairly optimistic about the potential of the weird side of the Internet and its ability to bring like-minded souls together rather than impose greater distance. It also bears a paradoxical political subtext. By removing the profit motive and focusing on personal pleasure, Paul recodes human labor, turning it into something gratifying, a means for making himself whole. By reconfiguring exploitation as a libidinal game, Paul (and Paul) shows us one possible route for escaping alienation. If that doesn’t merit a Scrub Daddy sponsorship deal, then what does?
Published as part of Cinéma du Réel 2025.
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