A Quiet Storm Beneath the Surface
Anja Marquardt’s She’s Lost Control (2014) was a quiet film. It was neither a box office success nor a contender for any major awards. For those who, by chance, came upon it, this quiet indie film became a haunting mirror reflecting isolation, vulnerability, and control — or the lack thereof. The film follows Ronah (played by Brooke Bloom), a sexual surrogate whose professional calm starts to unravel as her emotions are breached by the boundaries of her work. It’s not just a story about intimacy therapy. It’s a profoundly moving study of loneliness in the digital age, performed by actors who seemed, even off screen, to live fragments of their characters in their everyday lives.
A Story Told in Silences
Slow and deliberate, the film’s rhythm mirrors Ronah’s life, which is similarly measured and still. Working as a surrogate partner, she helps clients overcome intimacy issues by guiding them through structured emotional and physical sessions. But she starts to crack when she meets Johnny (Marc Menchaca), a client whose raw pain and emotional turmoil deeply resonate with her own. What unfolds is not a romance, but a breakdown of boundaries, a collapse of the carefully constructed world Ronah lives in.
What allowed She’s Lost Control to rise above other works was its treatment of the subject matter. The camera fixated on the subject to observe. While there was dialogue, the silences were weighted, and the restraint became disturbing. The audience’s discomfort was a result of the split. Was the feeling with Ronah empathy, or was it fear?
Brooke Bloom — Living Between Characters and Reality
For her, She’s Lost Control was more than just another indie role. It became a turning point, both artistically and personally. Bloom previously had supporting roles in shows like Louie and Law & Order. In this film, she carried it on her shoulders. This was a dramatic change, as she was used to long, unbroken takes with heavy, wordless emotions.
During interviews, Bloom confessed how emotionally exhausting playing Ronah was. She had to investigate sex surrogates, looking into their therapies and ethical dilemmas. What she found was people who were emotionally drained and had their limits constantly pushed. For Bloom, this research spilled over into her personal life, forcing her to evaluate her own boundaries regarding compassion and control. “It’s about caretaking,” she once said. “About how much of yourself you give away before there’s nothing left.”
The film’s rawness seemed to affect her real-life trajectory too. After She’s Lost Control, Bloom’s career pivoted toward darker, introspective roles. She appeared in Gypsy alongside Naomi Watts — again exploring blurred emotional lines — as if the role of Ronah had permanently shaped her artistic identity.
Marc Menchaca — The Conflicted Masculinity
Marc Menchaca, who played Johnny, brought a quiet volatility that perfectly countered Bloom’s restrained breakdown. Menchaca wasn’t a household name then — more of a working actor balancing theater and television gigs. But his performance in She’s Lost Control caught the attention of indie filmmakers who admired his subtle intensity.
Menchaca’s unique style of performance was strikingly similar to the portrayal of Johnny. Bloom recalls how Menchaca was method prep and how he kept to himself during filming to hold on to the tension the script called for. During the filming of the scene, Menchaca and Bloom spoke very little and this was a decision from director Marquardt. This was meant to keep the awkward realism the characters had to sustain.
Much later, Menchaca’s performance in Ozark and The Outsider received similar comments regarding the same restrained menace. It seems as if She’s Lost Control somehow silently constructed the emotional groundwork for these later performances, for the characters he plays, and for the men he plays, marooned, emotionally in shame, guilt, desire and repression.
Delicate Experiment of the Director
Anja Marquardt’s direction was as methodical as her protagonist’s profession. The film had a small budget, little crew, and every shot was planned and executed in a way that Ronah and the crew would use their observational skills to capture the scene. Marquardt also chose to shoot in real New York apartments, as opposed to sets, to capture the essence of the film. But this realism also posed other challenges. The crew worked in a confined zone with limited room and natural lighting, and they shot scenes that blurred the lines of performance and intrusion.
While directing, Marquardt motivated her actors to improvise emotional responses, instead of dialogue. In fact, Brooke Bloom mentioned that some moments in the film, including the quiet breakdown near the mirror, were completely improvised. These creative decisions did contribute to the unsettling realism of the film, but they did leave the actors emotionally exhausted.
Framing the Film’s Echoes Silently
Critical reception of the film at the Berlin International Film Festival included descriptors like “brave,” “discomforting,” and “eerily relevant.” While it did not find mainstream success, it did find an audience in the indie community and therapists. For some, the film was too clinical, while others were struck by the depiction of how intimacy was increasingly transactional.
Years later, the film, and especially the character of Ronah, gained a cult following on streaming services. Her character, once criticized, now symbolizes a modern woman struggling with the overlapping demands of emotional work, empathy, and her value in the marketplace. As emotional labor, therapy, and consent became popular and often discussed topics, the character aligned with modern expectations and challenges placed upon women.
What is Left After the Fade-Out
The cast and crew created a family, bonding over the exhaustion of the shoot. There were nights when Bloom left the set in tears, doubting if she was “still in character.” Menchaca, too, described the shoot as “emotionally claustrophobic.” Both, however, lauded Marquardt for developing a genuinely safe space for vulnerability — a rarity in films featuring sexual intimacy.
For the leads, She’s Lost Control was a peculiar mirror, reflecting as much about them personally as it did thematically about the characters. Bloom’s subsequent projects continued to examine the central theme of psychological fragility, while Menchaca, in stark contrast, forged a career around the contemplation of quiet, unresolved moral tension. It did not catapult them to celebrity status, but it certainly made them fearless performers.
And in that regard, She’s Lost Control became prophetic. It was, surely, about losing control, but even more so it was about the purity of truth found in the heart of chaos — for the characters, for the performers, and for all those who know the price of caring too much.
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