THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY
The Duke of Burgundy
“Love is patient, love is kind, love is a human toilet.” That may not be quite how 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 goes, but it’s an apt enough summary for The Duke of Burgundy, Peter Strickland’s sumptuous drama that flirts with both love and squalor, sincerity and sleaze.
The film’s log line is simple enough: a wealthy entomologist named Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) tests the limits of her relationship with the younger Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna). But the romance is anything but traditional, as far as cinematic pairings go. Evelyn yearns to be emotionally, and often physically, abused by her lover, from being locked in a trunk at the food of their bed to the regular ingestion of Cynthia’s urine.
At the beginning of the film, it appears the two lovers are in perfect bliss, with Cynthia happily inhabiting the role of stern mistress, and Evelyn her naive and intimidated fauxvictim. Yet Evelyn is revealed to be an increasingly needy and desperate partner, urging Cynthia to take their roles in more elaborate and complex directions — leading to one particularly amusing discussion of the aforementioned human toilet. It’s a progression of intimacy that snaps Cynthia’s patience, sparking a melodramatic battle of desire, fulfilment and compromise. So, in other words, the bones of a traditional mid-relationship romance, with the novelty here of it being between two gorgeous and, to some extent, surreal women. But it’s a love story all the same.
Those who may easily be enticed by the promise of lipstick lesbians mixed with kinky BDSM will be disappointed, though. This is no Red Shoes Diary highlights reel, but a complex and emotionally draining portrait of a relationship gone sour. Strickland uses all the tropes of soft- core sleaze, but turns them inside out. There’s not even a flash of nudity, nor a succession of stage-crafted moans. Just the raw intimacy of two lovers trying to accommodate one another, for reasons they both probably long forgot.
While full credit must go to Strickland ( Berberian Sound Studio) for creating such an intensely close and haunting world — one which is curiously devoid of men — Knudsen and D’Anna also deliver revelatory performances. The film doesn’t start at the beginning or end of their relationship, but smack in the middle, leaving the two actors to pull off the somewhat impossible task of portraying a romance already in progress. Each of Knudsen’s glares and whispers carry the weight of a thousand nights spent loving or loathing her partner, while D’Anna turns on the faux-innocent doe-eyed charm with unnerving skill. As strange and unfamiliar a world they both inhabit, it also seems disarmingly familiar. Not everyone wants to be stuffed into a mattress underneath their lover, but we all want to be close to, and please, the person most important in our lives.
It’s no wonder the film’s distributor is opening The Duke of Burgundy directly opposite Fifty Shades of Grey. That adaptation may attempt to get its devotees of Twilight fan-fiction hot and bothered, but Strickland is aiming for a discomfort that will last far longer than two hours spent in the dark.
The Duke of Burgundy opens Feb. 13 in Vancouver and Feb. 27 in Toronto.