ARTS & CULTURE
Monday, April 6, 2015 11
A Trio of Film Reviews, Currently in Theatres
The marvels of filmmakers unhinged: S&M, stalkers,
and seatbelt hangings
kendall grant › staff writer
The Duke of Burgundy (2014) 3/4
Sumptuously claustrophobic, visually ravishing,
emotionally wise, wryly subversive, and peculiarly
haunting, The Duke of Burgundy is a deeply eccentric filigree of a film; a louche, auteurist hothouse
contemporary gothic; and a daring, atmospheresoaked piece of hypnotherapy. It’s a perversely sincere (and sincerely perverse) labour of love.
Every day, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen, After
the Wedding) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), two
lesbian entomologists, act out a simple, provocative ritual that ends with Evelyn’s punishment and
pleasure. As Cynthia yearns for a more conventional relationship, Evelyn’s obsession with erotica
becomes an addiction that pushes the relationship to
a breaking point.
Writer-director Peter Strickland follows up his
chilly giallo-horror Berberian Sound Studio with
something warmer and sweeter – though no
less strange—and affirms himself as the preeminent champion of notoriously disreputable genres.
Projecting a saucy theme and its minor variations,
Strickland generates a discomfiting quality that taps
into the intangible elements of sexual attraction by
bathing them in ambiguities.
Showcasing that Cynthia and Evelyn are as
trapped as the insects they collect and catalogue,
Strickland evokes mystery and eroticism, all without nudity, bad dialogue, or the wooden acting that
plagues Razzie-worthy bombs such as Fifty Shades
of Grey. In so doing, Strickland builds The Duke
of Burgundy into a complex, densely layered essay
on the privileges of victimhood and the nuances of
what it means to suffer for love.
Strickland spins the seminal S&M sendup
Secretary with threads from Peter Greenaway’s
Angels and Insects, Jacques Rivette’s Celine and
Julie Go Boating, and the Belgian-French thriller
Amer. He also inhales the lost aroma of Ingmar
Bergman’s Persona and charges full-tilt into the
objectifying whims of his fantasies to reach the
other end of perception. The Duke of Burgundy
looks like an agile homage to the arthouse eroticism
of Walerian Borowczyk—albeit at his most preposterous—and tips its hats to such masters of costumed
erotica as Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and Tinto Brass,
without ever cheapening i