The thrills of S&M are rooted in illusion. Bondage, humiliation, and punishment are all desired outcomes in sadomasochist fetishism yet in the end they’re fantasies turned off with a single word. The women in The Duke of Burgundy however, have a harder time turning their performative eroticism “on” than off.
The Peter Strickland film, which plays Saturday night at 9:15p in The Marquee, exists in the vacuum of its two entomologists, Evelyn (Chiara DâAnna) and Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), and their quiet English estate. Within its first few minutes, the pair indulge in a recurring fantasy: in which Evelyn arrives at the doorstep as a hired cleaning hand before being taken to the bathroom and “punished” by Cynthia and her cold, unforgiving roleplaying. Even when she’s locked in an antique chest or yes, having her face sat on, the wide-eyed zeal of D’Anna’s performance make it clear she’s the one more excited by this dynamic. Cynthia capably plays the willing partner, ironically dominant in her part and yet submissive in her agency. Her stuffy wigs and polished boot heels tease a powerful theatricality — one that might tower over The Duke of Burgundy‘s mid-century male-free tableau were it more than a fantasy — but Cynthia comes to find Evelyn’s monotonous friction of their roleplay callousing over the warmth and tenderness in their relationship.
Unlike his giallo throwback Berberian Sound Studio, Strickland doesn’t focus on blurring the line between fantasy and reality; a literal “focus” is the greater interest. Strickland’s camera presents Cynthia and Evelyn’s stilted tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘte with stark clarity in the autumnal daylight while peering in through the milky glass of bedroom windows for intimate nighttime moments. Such racked visual language brushes up against Evelyn’s intransigent naivete like an emotional brick wall, one that lacks the grace and levity of the moths the two study — moths that Strickland engorges with high-frame rates and indulgent framing.
How far should one change for another? It’s a vital question that Duke of Burgundy explores with Victorian grace — a feat only strengthened by its opening in which a woman relieves herself in her lover’s mouth. In WUD Film’s “Reel Love” LGBT Film Festival, this stands out with a visual acuity that perfumes such a plainly bolded relationship. (By contrast, Stranger by the Lake, which immediately follows Duke of Burgundy at Union South, mines spartan mise-en-scene for the darkly complex intimacies of its gay cruising.) Pacing his lovers through the same day-in day-out constraints (both leathered and figurative), Strickland has fashioned a kind of pseudo-scientific ethnography, one that slowly but surely hardens from its muted metamorphosis.
- The Duke of Burgundy screens Saturday at 9:15p. It’s part of WUD Film’s FREE weekend-long Reel Love Film Festival in the Union South Marquee.