I suppose Mail Order Wife is supposed to be in the slightly-too-tried-and-true mockumentary vein, except that it's only intermittently funny. But I also doubt it intends to be a dark and sophisticated treatise on human desire and domination, since few such treatises end with characters getting wacky and pushing each other into a hotel swimming pool (though Dr Strangelove was supposed to end with a pie fight). I suppose it's best to call it a dark comedy/mockumentary. But to call it such means considering exactly what we will accept as comic.

First of all, the film is only funny if you know it is a fiction; if you believe, as I did, that it is a real documentary, you can only watch with mounting fury as each major character reveals himself (and herself) to be more cruel, selfish, psychotic and generally reprehensible than you could have possible imagined. First, Adrian, who seems to be nothing more than a socially-inept slob, subjects his newly-purchased wife to his borderline-threatening lessons on chores - cleaning the toilet, making his favorite meal (chili, with a post-it note over the pot reading "Keep Stirring"), feeding his pet snake a live mouse. He becomes increasingly angry at the documentary crew, finally ending the production when the director questions his plans to have Lichi's tubes tied against her will. When Adrian turns out to be a bondage and role-playing home porn maker who forces his new purchase to dress up and act out his sexual fantasies for a camera, we are hardly surprised. Lichi escapes and comes to Andrew for protection; he seems helpful, calling friends to get her a job cooking in a restaurant, letting her sleep in his apartment - then, of course, sleeping with her behind his girlfriend's back. When Lichi blows up during a dinner party, the film turns to a tug-of-war between Adrian and Andrew, each trying to win Lichi back.

Adrian and Andrew represent two vastly different social worlds, but they are united in their contempt for women. Both treat Lichi as a sexual object and a maid, and a burden in any other situation. When Lichi escapes from Adrian's home, we first feel relieved, until we realize that in Andrew's home she is still cooking, cleaning, and providing sexual services. Adrian tries to have Lichi sterilized, but Andrew, while promising to give her children, makes excuse after excuse for why they are not ready. The most effective excuse, of course, is that Lichi turns out to be psychologically unstable, even psychotic, filling their apartment with novelty pigs and screaming pidgin obscenities ("You no man! You ladyboy!") when Andrew snivels about children.

Worst of all, however, is the camera. If Mail Order Wife makes a salient point, it is in its use of the objectifying and dominating video lens. Whether in Adrian's home or in Andrew's, Lichi is subject to the male gaze via the video camera; while Andrew may not tie her up or force her to perform sex acts on camera, he seems to have the recording device perpetually by his side, particularly when he needs to distance himself from his actions. When the translator first confronts him about what Lichi has told her (he has been sleeping with her, but refuses to break up with his girlfriend), he asks "Can I bring the camera? I want my side of the story to be on the record." He turns the camera on Lichi during her meltdown over having children, saying, as if to a child, "Let's watch this so you can see how stupid you're being." Significantly, when Lichi runs away from Andrew, she steals his camera, the most emasculating act possible.

Wait - now that I think of it, perhaps the camera isn't the worst part. Perhaps the worst part is when the film jumps the shark with Adrian finding Lichi's ad in yet another mail-order-bride catalogue. Perhaps the worst part is the half-cocked revenge plot involving the cameraman's dad, a yacht borrowed from Jos é Conseco (yes, really), and a earlier victim of Lichi's mail-order-bride scam. Or maybe the worst part is daring to overturn our carefully constructed victim/victimizer dynamic by making the victim as corrupt as the victimizers. Or maybe the worst part is confirming white male misogynistic and Orientalist paranoia by making the American males the dupes of an Asiatic seductress. Or maybe the worst part is involving Jos é Conseco, who has had enough problems lately, what with the steroid scandal and all. Whatever the case, Mail Order Wife leaves me with an unsettled feeling, like I've spent a hour and a half with a registered sex offender who has some pretty good points about the criminal justice system. A film that turns de facto slavery into a slapstick slobs vs. snobs pool party just feels wrong.