The Duke of Burgundy (18.)
Directed by Peter Strickland.
Starring Sidse Babett Knudson, Chiara D'Anna, Monica Swinn, Eugenia Caruso and Fatma Mohamed.
Watching The Duke of Burgundy is a little like visiting one of those vintage sweet shops where all its retro confectionery – the Caramacs and Curly Wurly and Love Hearts and Sherbet Dips and Gobstoppers – are meticulously displayed and everything is laid out just so.
The variety of English director Peter Strickland’s first three films – which ranged from sombre Hungarian rural tragedy (Katalin Vargas) to Bjork concert movie (Bibliophile Live) – suggested a restless talent eager for reinvention. His latest though sees him stuck in very much the same vein as his most acclaimed film Berbarian Sound Studio. His latest, a lesbian S/M tale, is another meticulous and sensual pastiche of 70s horror and erotica; low budget exploitation cinema lovingly replicated then given a light surrealist polish.
The film exists in an all female world outside of time and lost somewhere in the forests of central Europe. It's all a game and the games being played are between Cynthia (Knudson), an entomologist and her servant Evelyn (D'Anna.) Everyday Evelyn arrives to do her duties and incurs various punishments for failing to fulfil her tasks fully. Viewers expect some kind of power struggle between them but as the film unravels the reality behind the role plays, the plot doesn't develop in the ways you might expect.
Generally I tend to view bondage lesbianism with a certain indulgence but Duke of Burgundy grated with me right from the title sequence. It's lush and sensual and fetishistic but to an almost treacly sweet degree. It's all pristine and languorously sensual, so much so that it gets a bit a chore to wade through. (It's also, should you care about such things, considerably less racy than that 18 certificate would lead you to believe.)
It all feels like a guided tour round an uncle's porn stash, one that he has been kept carefully under wraps since the seventies. The passing of time and fading of the colour in the photos of Ginny bending over in a library may be said to have given them a Proustian poignancy, but smut nostalgia is a deeply personal thing, and dressing it up in filmic references isn't going to universalise that. The Duke of Burgundy is beautifully done but I just didn't really take to its chintzy chintzy eeriness.
The Duke of Burgundy (18.)
Directed by Peter Strickland.
Starring Sidse Babett Knudson, Chiara D'Anna, Monica Swinn, Eugenia Caruso and Fatma Mohamed.
Watching The Duke of Burgundy is a little like visiting one of those vintage sweet shops where all its retro confectionery – the Caramacs and Curly Wurly and Love Hearts and Sherbet Dips and Gobstoppers – are meticulously displayed and everything is laid out just so.
The variety of English director Peter Strickland’s first three films – which ranged from sombre Hungarian rural tragedy (Katalin Vargas) to Bjork concert movie (Bibliophile Live) – suggested a restless talent eager for reinvention. His latest though sees him stuck in very much the same vein as his most acclaimed film Berbarian Sound Studio. His latest, a lesbian S/M tale, is another meticulous and sensual pastiche of 70s horror and erotica; low budget exploitation cinema lovingly replicated then given a light surrealist polish.
The film exists in an all female world outside of time and lost somewhere in the forests of central Europe. It's all a game and the games being played are between Cynthia (Knudson), an entomologist and her servant Evelyn (D'Anna.) Everyday Evelyn arrives to do her duties and incurs various punishments for failing to fulfil her tasks fully. Viewers expect some kind of power struggle between them but as the film unravels the reality behind the role plays, the plot doesn't develop in the ways you might expect.
Generally I tend to view bondage lesbianism with a certain indulgence but Duke of Burgundy grated with me right from the title sequence. It's lush and sensual and fetishistic but to an almost treacly sweet degree. It's all pristine and languorously sensual, so much so that it gets a bit a chore to wade through. (It's also, should you care about such things, considerably less racy than that 18 certificate would lead you to believe.)
It all feels like a guided tour round an uncle's porn stash, one that he has been kept carefully under wraps since the seventies. The passing of time and fading of the colour in the photos of Ginny bending over in a library may be said to have given them a Proustian poignancy, but smut nostalgia is a deeply personal thing, and dressing it up in filmic references isn't going to universalise that. The Duke of Burgundy is beautifully done but I just didn't really take to its chintzy chintzy eeriness.
