O Duque de Burgundy

A rather simple "story" or rather vignette about the tensions in a relationship - the two lovers are lesbians (Evelyn and Cynthia) and are playing out a dominance and submission scenario - but basically the problems the couple faces are the same as with most relationships: Boredom by routine, a little jealousy, and Cynthia is having trouble with Evelyn's more and more demanding whims.

What makes this film stand out for me is the all-embracing vision: Acting, costumes, set design, props, music, rhythm - everything works together perfectly to form a total work of art. Usually such a clear and uncompromising concept is restricted to short films; here it's drawn out to 100 lush minutes. I felt positively reminded of Peter Greenaway! There are also some fun visual jokes or references like the mannequins in the audience but they don't take away from the focus.

Now, while that's some praise, there's also drawbacks that come with this single-mindedness: The plot is just a "plot", coming from and leading to nowhere; we never learn much about the characters; the whole thing begins to feel drawn-out. Basically you could have told the thing in 30 minutes without losing much impact. While I can wholeheartedly recommend this beautiful production, I doubt if I'll rewatch it anytime soon in its full length.

Titled after a butterfly native to Britain, this intense drama focuses on a romantic relationship between two entomologists that begins to crumble as their role playing takes an emotional strain on the woman forced to play dominant by her masochistic girlfriend. Lusciously photographed, with several shots that slowly travel up and down butterfly displays, and beginning with opening credits in the fashion of a late 1960s or early 1970s movie, 'The Duke of Burgundy' is a visually arresting experience and the detailed costumes are impressive too. The film also benefits from a lack of exposition; at first, the submissive woman appears to the dominant's maid and our preconceptions are further challenged as it is slowly revealed that the submissive one has all control in the relationship, often uncomfortably coaxing her lover into improvising speeches and punishments to help her achieve satisfaction. Interesting as all this might sound, the completely non-explicit way that their interactions are filmed takes away much of the intimacy with no nudity and precious few moments of them close together. The repetitiveness of their routines also grows tiresome, if somewhat appropriately so to reflect the dominant one's disenchantment with their affair. Certainly, there is enough of interest here to make the film worth a look, but one's mileage will probably vary.

Even I, in my 63 year-old female dotage, got the bug. What a great pair. Both the characters and the actors. The story is tight; every moment is important; and there are a lot of silent moments. A couple of lesbians, one rich and older/one cute and younger, live together, love together, and sex up a storm. For the younger one, sex is every waking moment. Even moments with no physical contact. For her the act of being a sex slave makes her deliriously happy and sexy. She always has orders for her dominant queen. She dresses her, tells her how to sit, and how long. The dom is getting a little tired of the whole deal, or is she?

This isn't a d/s film really as some say (more routinely known as bdsm but I shorten it to essentials). To my mind, that would be about someone who sheds control and truly gives herself over to another person. What we have instead is someone controlling a fantasy around her. This doesn't preclude it from being good of course but it's worth making the distinction between fetish as piece of theater and vital baring of soul.

But this reveals what the film is actually about and only disguised with erotica. It's about obsessive self, the self that tries to control life, shown as the real barrier that stands in the way of knowing intimacy, reducing life to theater. A petulant ego, as we go on to see, that only expects to be pleased and smothers the other, and the rituals, games, fictions it weaves that keep it from being there for the genuine exchange with another person that sex and love are both ways to manifest. In this way she explores neither herself nor her partner.

And I would go a step further. The big question in both loving intimacy with another person and making a film about it, or really any film that wants to probe the deepest recesses of self, is by what degrees to know and maintain distance, the distance as ambiguity that you honor by refusing to reduce. By what degrees to anticipate and remain open to spontaneity, lead or allow yourself to be led. You can trust that everyone from Tarkovsky to Lynch has mulled over this long and hard, how much to make known even to themselves.

Here there are two reversals of control (over the viewing experience). One in who controls the exchange, and a second about the fictional nature of the exchange. Their effect however is that they leave me with a rather thin reality of petulant abuser and her exasperated enabler. What I have revealed of this world makes me feel that it's not worth staying for.

But knowing his previous work, this is a filmmaker who wants to see with an eye that delves into space to know the feel and cares primarily for what creates visual fabrics. I have him on a short list of talent with the potential to be commanding our attention in the near future.

A very remarkable flow here delves between the woman's thighs, delves through her sex to the box that contains the skeletal remains of what used to be love, and through it to a forlorn walk in the woods that culminates with another box that is the girl swallowing her with suffocating desire.

So he has good intuitions, an eye that reminds me of Europe in the 70s. I hope he grows and takes the leap from being a Juraj Herz or more intelligent Franco into transcendent dreamworlds (as opposed to symbolic). But if he rests here, part of me will be happy all the same, the part of me that favors ethereal wandering. We don't get much of it anymore.

"The Duke Of Burgundy" was a fictional pub in the classic Ealing comedy Passport To Pimlico (1949). It also happens to be the name of a certain species of butterfly found only in England. Far from a film about a friendly neighbourhood pub, or an educational chat with David Attenborough, the 2014 incarnation of The Duke Of Burgundy is encased within a potent atmosphere of unease, sexual tension, twisted eroticism and dark humour. Much like viewing a case of mounted butterflies, we watch the action unfold. Visuals are more important than words. This is a truly cinematic experience that demands its audience closely observe everything before its eyes. The butterfly metaphor may be overused - having been exploited in The Collector (1965) and in The Smiths lyric "You can pin and mount me like a butterfly" - however, it is revisited to great effect in this film.

The film observes the daily routine of Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna). Much like insects pinned down and encased under glass, we observe them trapped in a provocative routine that starts with punishment and pleasure and ends with a crumbling emotional facade. As Cynthia yearns for a more conventional relationship, Evelyn's obsession with erotic role-playing threatens to push the two apart.

The Duke of Burgundy is a unique voyeuristic experience courtesy of Peter Strickland, the award winning writer and director of Berberian Sound Studio and Katalin Varga. Much like Berberian Sound Studio, he returns us to the European cult movies of the 1970's. It's refreshing to note that while many recent directors seem to be emulating the crowd-pleasing visuals of The Wachowskis, Lynch, Tarantino or Snyder, Strickland is enthralled with Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Jess Franco and Sergio Martino - with a pinch of Bergman. To a certain degree, Strickland's themes and visuals may also owe a debt to lesser known Euro-cult gems like Baby Yaga and Daughters of Darkness.

Anyone who's familiar with The Duke of Burgundy's cinematic lineage knows how essential a good soundtrack is. Many of the original giallo and Euro-sleaze films where soundtracked by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai and Goblin. The Duke of Burgundy benefits greatly from a soundtrack by Cat's Eyes, an alternative pop duo featuring vocalist Faris Badwan - of English indie rock band The Horrors - and Italian-Canadian soprano, composer and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Zeffira (sounding rather like Lynch favourite Julie Cruise). Having played their first ever gig in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, during an afternoon mass "attended by seven high-ranking cardinals", the duo are the perfect choice to compliment Strickland's retro Italo-thriller imagery. The opening credit sequence is an especially good mix of sound and image recalling the era perfectly.

If the overtly commercial eroticism of Fifty Shades of Grey leaves you cold, then head down to The Duke of Burgundy and drink in its intoxicating brew of dark, atmospheric erotica.