The Duke of Burgundy

Peter Strickland is a film maker who likes to do things differently – his last feature 'Berberian Sound Studio' will mean you will never look at a vegetable the same way again. Here he takes on the theme of a sadomasochistic, lesbian relationship to examine how we all depend on each other and the inter dependencies that can occur to make relationships work. At the heart are two lovers Cynthia and Evelyn who seem to be in a very one sided relationship – one being mistress and one being badly used servant.

They are also both entomologists and give talks on moths and butterflies – the title 'The Duke of Burgundy' is an actual butterfly orange and brown in colour and found in Europe and mostly Southern Britain. The moths also act as a metaphor in the case of being 'drawn to a flame' scenario; but also the many butterflies pinned and mounted that occur throughout the film reflect the love/abuse relationship in that the very beauty that attracts some people cause them to act in cruel way to the object of desire.

This is not 'Fifty Shades of Grey' the sex is all tastefully done off screen. It is also exceptionally beautifully filmed – in Hungary as it turns out. The attention to style and miniscule details is almost obsessive and worth every effort in terms of rewards for the viewer. It is though about relationships and what we will do for each other – even if it goes against our own particular grain. This is a film for those who appreciate art-house but like it to have one foot in realism (at least) and as such is one I both enjoyed and can easily recommend.

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.

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 meretricious film "The Duke of Burgundy" sinks under its own pretentious weight - an obnoxiously bad example of music video directors (Fincher and the like) taking over contemporary cinema. I'll briefly comment on what ordinarily I would merely toss (DVD) into the waste basket, informed by the director's telltale interview comments in the "bonus" (or bogus) material.

Claiming a budget of a million pounds (pity the fools running Film 4 and BFI in England these days) he mentions originally being pitched to direct a remake of a lousy Jesus Franco porn film from the '70s, a project he quickly tired of (who wouldn't - Franco remade all his losers from this period a dozen times over himself).

Instead he pounces on the flimsy juxtaposition of a a BDSM submissive living in co- dependence with an older woman who doesn't really get the BDSM imperative and only partially derives sustenance vicariously by pleasing the other. That plus unbelievably pretentious imagery about entomology spins out a tedious exercise that once again is all tension and no release - a surefire recipe for either putting a viewer to sleep or having him (or her) make a mad rush for the exit.

I have been watching a vast cross-section of lesbian porn in recent years, from the key sources such as Girlfriends Films, Sweetheart Video, Filly Films, Abigail Productions, Girl Candy and others. To varying degrees they all deliver the goods - naturalistic sex, real orgasms (believable at any rate), beautiful female performers, modest but fairly interesting story lines, an emotional connection, full nudity and explicit XXX visuals (with no cocks in sight). There are no cocks (or males) in "Burgundy", but no nudity, not even interesting soft-core sex, and precious little emotion or faked orgasm. The entire movie is a cheat, typical of the junk that clutters Film Festival schedules around the world, aimed at a coterie of fest programmers and so-called critics who for many decades practice virtual masturbation at the screening rooms with "artistic" pretend- pornography (see: Walerian Borowczyk, name-dropped by this hack alongside Franco).

Most telling interview statement is how the self-made genius who created this movie admires the films of hacks like Franco because they have been overlooked by mainstream film historians. What he fails to mention is that for approximately 25 years now the "outlaw" or euphemistically termed "exploitation" cinema has been egregiously promoted in conjunction with the rise of video (VHS then DVD) as prime source of viewing for younger would-be film buffs and due to the vagaries and ignorance of distribution predominates over mainstream works. Ask any young film buff today about Italian films and they will know by heart the works of Dario Argento, Joe D'Amato and perhaps Deodato and Umberto Lenzi (plus of course Sergio Leone) but would they have seen a single film by Ermanno Olmi, Francesco Rosi or even Marco Bellocchio (beyond his pornographic "Devil in the Flesh"), let alone the geniuses like Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Rossellini, Germi, Bolognini, Risi, Monicelli, Scola, Wertmuller and dozens of others?

No, the Tarantino revolution elevating junk (ALL of which I saw 40 or 50 years ago in cinemas in parallel with the "high art" I'm namedropping here) above quality has become firmly entrenched. If "The Duke of Burgundy" is to represent the 21st Century's version of "Arthouse cinema", just contrast it with the most ubiquitous titles I used to see over and over 50 years ago at my local revival and art houses, neither of which has been shown hardly at all in the past 25 years: Bourguignon's "Sundays and Cybele" and Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes" (latter also dealing with entomology). Back in the day it was often decried how those two titles were "overexposed" since programmers became infatuated with them (alongside the most popular of the day, Bergman), but who knew they would be forgotten and Joe Sarno films of the '60s would replace them in the consciousness of so many film buffs two generations later.

"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.