Besides Story of O and Secretary (2002), I can't think of a single other positive portrayal of female sexual submission in film. - Miss_October
I don't know that it is a
positive portrayal, because the story is ultimately left veiled and ambiguous, but the 1974 Japanese "Roman porno" film
Wife to Be Sacrificed has a number of scenes and themes that may be eye-opening to Occidentals--and with respect to your question, one of those is the ultimate attitude of the titular woman.
Akiko is the wife, and she is abducted by her estranged husband Kunisada, who is a fugitive after having disappeared following his arrest for a sex crime against a high school girl. Kunisada takes her to his cabin in the woods, where he ties her up a lot--this is a Japanese film;
shibari fans will find a few choice images here--and subjects her to various humiliations. Other adventures follow, but flashing forward to the end: The police raid the cabin while Kunisada is out, having left Akiko tightly bound within, but when the police try to untie her, she tells them to leave her alone because she likes it. There is a pivot scene prior to this, in which Akiko suggests that she has been "won over" by Kunisada again, but it's been a couple of years since I've seen the film and cannot recall it clearly.
So, whether Akiko has discovered her true submissive self or has Stockholm Syndrome is left up to the viewer.
Straying a little further off the mark,
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (
Atame in Spanish) is Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's rom-com version of
The Collector. Antonio Banderas is a former mental patient who obsesses over an actress played by Victoria Abril; much like Terence Stamp did to Samantha Eggar in
The Collector, he kidnaps her and ties her to the bed in his attempt to get her to fall in love with him. Unlike
The Collector, though,
Tie Me Up!, although slightly dark for the first half, turns into a rom-com at the halfway point when Abril develops Stockholm Syndrome (or so it seems), and they fall in love after all. There's more to it than that, so I don't want to sell the film short (and most of the Almodovars I've seen are worthy of investigation), but it is ultimately pretty light-hearted.
That's all I can think of.
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"We're the pros from Dover. We're here to operate." - Trapper John and Hawkeye
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