O Duque de Burgundy

This is frustrating because I felt like I had so much to say about the film as it was going on but now I can't find the words. The directing here is spellbinding. That is really the one word to describe it. It's so sensual and seductive, so enigmatic and impenetrable. The directing transforms everything else around it. Sidse Babett Knudsen is also absolutely spectacular. Throughout most of it she carries the film with just her face, and that's all she needs to make us understand. She deserves awards attention, for sure.

Unfortunately, when I said that the directing was spellbinding, it is... but there's a certain disconnect between it and the screenplay. Thematically, the film is strong (sort of), but narratively, it's also incredibly repetitive and drawn out. No doubt Strickland's direction strengthens the film quite a lot, as does Knudsen, and while visually there are so many things to marvel at, the direction almost gets away with hiding its flaws... almost. When the film isn't drawing out its inevitable conclusion (which, in terms of the last shot, was completely predictable) it sort of feels oddly melodramatic (without ever really going big) and sort of soapy. I enjoyed the film, no doubt, but the longer it went on the bigger a disconnect I felt between its various aspects. Still, I see this getting a lot of passionate fans (and dissenters) from both sides. I'm definitely in the positive side, although it really deserved to be so much better as a whole

Forget 9 1/2 Weeks, forget Last Tango in Paris, forget Secretary and most definitely forget 50 Shades, this is THE definitive cinematic essay on a dom/sub relationship.

The idea is a fascinating and brave one: to create an homage to artistic elements of the "disreputable" sexploitation movies of the 1970s and make it beautiful and profound. It's another movie that full of references to other movies and to the movie-making process. I recognised only little hints of Just Jaekin, being unfamiliar with the other influences. I did spot the marker tape on the carpet that serve two purposes, practical and metaphorical. Er.. three, there are two metaphors going on, I think, one plot-related and one post- modern commentary.

Talking of plot, it is so slight that it could be explained in three sentences. I won't, obviously, but honestly it wouldn't matter if I did. What matters is the manner of the telling.

The story inhabits a strange dream-like space where everyone in the town is a fetishistic female entomologist! (If anyone can explain the significance of the entomology, please do, I'm all ears!) But within the unreal external world, the two heroines inhabit an emotional world that is utterly believable.

In sumptuous but slightly muted autumn colours, the film looks gorgeous. I found it sensual, very erotic (despite there being no more than a few seconds of anything you could call "sex" and no nudity at all), emotionally engaging, warm, sad, funny and REAL.

Although the story deals exclusively with dominance and submission (no trace of S&M despite what it says in all the publicity, including in interviews with the director) it is a universal story about conflicting desires, fantasies, trust and compromise. In some way, it is a story for every relationship.

I absolutely loved this film.

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.

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.

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?