Pluskylang Great Film overall

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

philiprogers-24076 Up front: I would be lying outright if I claimed to understand this movie entirely. Outwardly, it is an adroit (if somewhat clinical) dissection of the quirky relationship between a lepidopterist and her apparently submissive lover. However there are, I am quite sure, many nuances and sub-references that managed to elude me. If the aim of the director was to pin the affair onto a sort of mounting board for examination without killing it stone dead in the process, it was at least partially successful. The narrative neatly begs the question: who is actually the Dominant party in a Dominance/Submission context? The inevitable ritualisation of such a partnership comes under efficient scrutiny, as do the erotic mechanics -but thankfully, those seeking abundant titillation (or, indeed, much of a story) would do well to look elsewhere. Everything plays out over a season in a rather eccentric all-female community of bicycling scholars of butterfly, moth and insect matters. Somehow, this seems perfectly reasonable and not remotely surreal within the ambit of the movie. I believe this to be a work of great brilliance, if devoid of much human warmth. It is a tribute to the direction that I didn't miss that warmth, and the whole enterprise succeeds effortlessly. Certain scenes are quite sublime (the visit of the 'Carpenter', for example); the acting first-class, and the vision disciplined -I use that term advisedly! Please see it for yourself; at least you will not find anything else very like it.

John Seal Bearing a title perhaps more appropriate to a Francophone frock flick starring Isabelle Adjani, The Duke of Burgundy takes its title from a species of butterfly. Insects – and especially Lepidoptera – are front and center in this film, though their actual bearing on the plot is minimal.The film details an unusual relationship between two women. Cynthia (Mifune and After the Wedding's Sidse Babett Knudsen) is an imperious, middle-aged writer and amateur entomologist, while Evelyn (Chiarra D'Anna) is a younger woman who at first appears to be Cynthia's simpering maid – a helpmeet who just can't seem to wash madam's underwear properly.Belying first impressions, their relationship is not strictly of the master-slave variety. The duo are a couple engaged in a sado-masochistic fling: Cynthia issues the (frequently unreasonable) orders, and Evelyn carries them out until compelled to utter the safe word pinastri – otherwise known as the Pine Hawk-moth, a species of butterfly. The scripted 'game' is repeated on a daily basis – at least, until Cynthia becomes a little bored with it all, and the safe word begins to lose its efficacy.Though he can hardly be considered a youngster at 41, writer-director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) is clearly among the best of the recent crop of British film directors. He's in great company with Steve McQueen, Richard Ayoade and others, but his style is utterly his own, reflecting a cornucopia of film influences from the 1960s and '70s.Critics have compared his work with that of David Lynch, but that's a facile comparison at best. Other than The Elephant Man (1979), Lynch has never made a film about real, believable human beings. His characters are symbols, not people. Such is not Strickland's style.There are echoes here of Dario Argento (the plague of locusts in Phenomena), Harry Kümel (one of the film's secondary characters bears a startling resemblance to Delphine Seyrig's character in Kümel's Daughters of Darkness), and Jean Rollin (Monica Swinn, featured in Rollin's astonishing pirate fantasy Demoniacs and not seen on screen since 1982, was somehow tempted out of retirement by Strickland ala Suzy Kendall in Berberian).The Duke of Burgundy is a looker, with veteran cinematographer Nicholas Knowland (who shot Simon Magus, one of the best films no-one's ever seen) capturing the Hungarian locations in deep autumnal hues. And then there's the film's opening credits: truly the finest credit sequence I've seen in years. The late Maurice Binder would have been impressed.Let's not forget the music: composed by a collective known as Cat's Eyes, the film's score is exquisite. Strickland is also a master of sound manipulation, and he effectively uses 'songs' by recording artists Flying Saucer Attack and Nurse With Wound as ambient noise throughout The Duke of Burgundy.Have I gushed sufficiently? The bottom line is I can't recommend this film highly enough, and it'll feature prominently on my faves of 2015 list. And if you're still not convinced, surely you can't resist a film featuring a credited 'human toilet consultant'?

lor_ The meretricious film "The Duke of Burgundy" sinks under its own pretentious weight - an obnoxiously bad example of music video directors (Fincher and the like) taking over contemporary cinema. I'll briefly comment on what ordinarily I would merely toss (DVD) into the waste basket, informed by the director's telltale interview comments in the "bonus" (or bogus) material.Claiming a budget of a million pounds (pity the fools running Film 4 and BFI in England these days) he mentions originally being pitched to direct a remake of a lousy Jesus Franco porn film from the '70s, a project he quickly tired of (who wouldn't - Franco remade all his losers from this period a dozen times over himself).Instead he pounces on the flimsy juxtaposition of a a BDSM submissive living in co- dependence with an older woman who doesn't really get the BDSM imperative and only partially derives sustenance vicariously by pleasing the other. That plus unbelievably pretentious imagery about entomology spins out a tedious exercise that once again is all tension and no release - a surefire recipe for either putting a viewer to sleep or having him (or her) make a mad rush for the exit.I have been watching a vast cross-section of lesbian porn in recent years, from the key sources such as Girlfriends Films, Sweetheart Video, Filly Films, Abigail Productions, Girl Candy and others. To varying degrees they all deliver the goods - naturalistic sex, real orgasms (believable at any rate), beautiful female performers, modest but fairly interesting story lines, an emotional connection, full nudity and explicit XXX visuals (with no cocks in sight). There are no cocks (or males) in "Burgundy", but no nudity, not even interesting soft-core sex, and precious little emotion or faked orgasm. The entire movie is a cheat, typical of the junk that clutters Film Festival schedules around the world, aimed at a coterie of fest programmers and so-called critics who for many decades practice virtual masturbation at the screening rooms with "artistic" pretend- pornography (see: Walerian Borowczyk, name-dropped by this hack alongside Franco).Most telling interview statement is how the self-made genius who created this movie admires the films of hacks like Franco because they have been overlooked by mainstream film historians. What he fails to mention is that for approximately 25 years now the "outlaw" or euphemistically termed "exploitation" cinema has been egregiously promoted in conjunction with the rise of video (VHS then DVD) as prime source of viewing for younger would-be film buffs and due to the vagaries and ignorance of distribution predominates over mainstream works. Ask any young film buff today about Italian films and they will know by heart the works of Dario Argento, Joe D'Amato and perhaps Deodato and Umberto Lenzi (plus of course Sergio Leone) but would they have seen a single film by Ermanno Olmi, Francesco Rosi or even Marco Bellocchio (beyond his pornographic "Devil in the Flesh"), let alone the geniuses like Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Rossellini, Germi, Bolognini, Risi, Monicelli, Scola, Wertmuller and dozens of others? No, the Tarantino revolution elevating junk (ALL of which I saw 40 or 50 years ago in cinemas in parallel with the "high art" I'm namedropping here) above quality has become firmly entrenched. If "The Duke of Burgundy" is to represent the 21st Century's version of "Arthouse cinema", just contrast it with the most ubiquitous titles I used to see over and over 50 years ago at my local revival and art houses, neither of which has been shown hardly at all in the past 25 years: Bourguignon's "Sundays and Cybele" and Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes" (latter also dealing with entomology). Back in the day it was often decried how those two titles were "overexposed" since programmers became infatuated with them (alongside the most popular of the day, Bergman), but who knew they would be forgotten and Joe Sarno films of the '60s would replace them in the consciousness of so many film buffs two generations later.

lasttimeisaw BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO, is centred on a British sound engineer Gilderoy (Jones), who previously works on projects such as pastoral documents, arrives in Italy to work in a new project from Italian director Giancarlo Santini (Mancino) in the titular studio, which he has no idea is a spooky giallo about witches, anyway he stays and engages in working with the obnoxious producer Francesco (Fusco), but due to the barrier of language and the rude behaviour received from his new colleagues, Gilderoy is incapable of blending in with the team and begins to question his professional competence, hallucinations and dreamlike sequences ensue, what is the real deal to bring him to the studio? Is he one of the characters in the giallo flick or an unwitting guinea pig of a bigger but secret project?Everything will end in a befuddling concussion and here is my main gripe, it is a 93-minutes film, stuffed with minute details towards the omnipresence of sound (both lifeless objects and human voice including screaming and post-dub process), and striking shots of various apparatus and items (mainly vegetables) used to create specific sound in a claustrophobic working environment, lumbers drearily until the last 15 minutes or so (the most banal part is the stereotyped depiction of the Italian crew), the storyline finally begins to project an uncanny angle which piques curiosity, but as if Strickland doesn't have a clear train-of- thought of what has happened, the picture comes to a halt abruptly, provokes the frustration due to one's unquenched satisfaction mixed with a sense of deception, obviously something rotten is festering (other than the vegetables), but there are so little clues being offered for us to conjecture a plausible upshot. Fortuitously, this bitter taste will be massively dispelled in Strickland's latest project, THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, a lesbian drama set in an ethereal world with no men in sight (yes, no dukes or whatsoever, even a mannequin sitting among the audience during the academic symposium is female). Cynthia (Knudsen) is a lepidopterologist (a branch of entomology concerning the study of moths and butterflies), actually the film's title refers to a particular species of butterfly in UK. She lives in a quaint and baroque villa in an anonymous rural area with her younger lover Evelyn (D'Anna), probably her disciple.Due to Strickland's ingenious trickery, initially audience is ushered to a scenario of a two- play between Cynthia, a harsh mistress and her subservient maid Evelyn, the latter will be punished if she doesn't meet the former's strict demand. Later their real identity lays bare that the two are actual lovers, their double-imaged sex scenes embroider a layer of mystery into their devoted passion, and more shockingly, the punishment is implied to be urolagnia, which immediately explains why Cynthia is persistently shown drinking water before their role-play. So it is about BDSM, a lesbian variant of 50 SHADES OF GREY (2015)? Believe me, it's much better! The role definition is another twist here, the apparently dominant Cynthia, is really the passive one, all her act is wholesomely scripted by Evelyn in advance, who can only satisfy her libido by being put under some sort of punishment/humiliation, she dictates which line Cynthia should deliver, at what precise moment, which costume and wig she should wear during the occasion. Nevertheless, after the repetitious act, Cynthia grows tired of the game, and mainly because she doesn't enjoy it sexually, and meanwhile Evelyn becomes more and more difficult to be satisfied, since commitment is the key in role- playing, once Cynthia has a slip of mind in her role, a small chasm will inevitably engenders. After a futile effort to purchase a tailor-made bed or a human toilet (I cannot even imagine what it is), Evelyn's request escalates to be locked up in an antique chest with hands tied up for the night as a punishment she enjoys, their relationship is under severe strain, until a corny set piece of betrayal opportunely emerges (by cleaning other woman's boots).Meritoriously Strickland doesn't resort to hyperbole, he sticks to the eerie atmosphere, picturesque location, tonal device, to decipher Cynthia's incubus and Evelyn's controlling nature, butterflies and specimens are deployed with staggering beauty and the finale, a rotation to the beginning, is a hymn celebrating the delicate equilibrium between two lovers, love demands sacrifice, both parties can take one step back and strive to re-connect from the very start, that is a profound meditation on the nature of love, however cinematically contrived the story is, this end-note remarkably hits the bull's eye.Both films feature strong leading performances, Toby Jones in BSS, is an outsider awkwardly boxed up in a bizarrely sonic space, helplessly struggles to get a grip with his own sense while forcibly keeping the appearance of sobriety, and his stern look during a prolonged close-up is a defiant testimony of the perseverance from an unattractive character thespian, if the camera lingers on him longer, he can be an attention-grabber too.Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen, mostly known for Susanne Bier's Oscar-nominated foreign picture AFTER THE WEDDING (2006, 7/10) expresses in fluent English and lights up the screen with a sympathetic presentation of a woman plagued by her lover's gruelling quest to challenge the limbo of human lust. Italian actress Chiara D'Anna, also appears in BSS, not a knockout at first sight, but grows on you with her seductive manner of speaking and unyielding determination to delve into the darkest side of her sexual thrill. All in all, TDOB is a deliriously lurid fable with a swooning flagrancy, without a doubt Strickland's best work to date.