The Duke of Burgundy

Very watchable and stylistically playful erotic drama that has some pretty impressive visuals, decent performances and appropriately sensual atmosphere but slightly digs itself into an awkward trench between arthouse and exploitation cinema, dramatic depth and pandering. Also despite not coming off as just pretentious lesbian BDSM nonsense there were times when its slow dreamy meandering felt a bit boring or vacuous and got in the way of the legitimately quite touching love story.

Fairly insane on a formalist level: Its imagery is wildly surreal, sensual, and entrancing all at once; juxtaposed is its sound mixing reminiscent of David Lynch's masterful blending and texturing of white noise, aligned with the spacey echoes of Cat's Eyes' psychedelic rock. Its hypnotic pace is somewhat jarred loose in the final act due to several seemingly false endings, but it's not enough to diminish the film's unmistakable mastery of atmosphere and mood.

First we are introduced into the different roles two women have; one slave, the other master. But then slowly the movie shows how much that all is just a game and how they slowly drift apart. It takes great skill to make such a moving humanistic movie that's so stylished about this kind of relationship. Sidse Babett Knudsen masterfully shows first with little facial expressions and than more and more her real emotions behind her mask. It's surprisingly funny at times.

"So had I ordered a human toilet, none of this would have happened?" A fine film.

A quietly compelling, stylish, if somewhat meandering, look at a relationship between two women. Given the subject matter, it would be easy to let this slip into something more exploitative, but it all feels quite restrained and absent any real titillation. The two leads are very good, really selling their parts in the relationship. It looks great and the soundtrack works well. Perhaps easier to appreciate than to enjoy. I'd like to see Strickland make more films. Worth a look.

A film that follows the relationship -- but primarily the meticulously detailed roleplaying -- between two women. Highly stylized, incredibly weird, but smart and with a genuine heart. Strong performances. Really slow, but that's mostly okay. A few humorous scenes scattered throughout, too. It's good.

Lesbian vampires are to this what giallo was to BBS. A loving tribute that's just as meticulous in the sound as visuals. A beautiful dreamy world with a wonderful performance from Knudsen. Orlbaq gur boivbhf gb naq seb bs cbjre frrzrq gb zr na F & Z -pybnxrq ershgngvba bs gur byq Yrfovna Orq Qrngu zlgu -naq gur nffhzcgvbaf vg qrevirq sebz. Whfg n thrff gubhtu, rirelguvat frrzf zber cebsbhaq ng gung gvzr va gur zbeavat.

Less than the sum of its parts. The visuals are pretty nice. The film has a sense of foreboding that doesn't really fit. The two leads are interesting for a while, but the movie just keeps going even after every aspect of their relationship has been examined. I would still say it's worth watching though.

Sidse Babett Knudsen shows that she is more than capable of taking on international roles, and Strickland is a director to watch, for sure. But this story of weird sexual needs is a bit too meandering.

Fascinating material, well-researched and suavely executed...up until the third act. As evinced by both this and Berber Sound Studio, Strickland has a tendency to just really let loose his inner film geek towards the end of his features. I realize it's supposed to be nods and homages and flirtations with the avant-garde, but it ends up feeling like he doesn't really know how to end a movie. Still, the schizophrenic experimentation is forgivable when the photography and acting is as good as this.

I've heard of butterfly kisses, but this is ridiculous!

Every relationship is sado-masochistic on some level. Every dying relationship becomes a sad negotiation sooner or later. Can you relate to the sadness?

Strickland out here showing us all how to be pretentious AND horny. Tell you what if I was in Borgen’s situation here I sure wouldn’t spend so much tine complaining. You don’t have someone’s body heat keeping you up during the summer nights and you always have clean boots

Highly aestheticised, with a kind of 1970s style about it, and seemingly influenced by Deleuze's account in "Coldness and Cruelty" of the different economies of desire of the sadist and the masochist, this is therefore very nice to look at, to listen to and to think about. But for all that it may ultimately just be some very high-grade S&M lesbian porn. So, you know, draw your own conclusions.

"perfumed by"!!!

Couple of fruity broads with a strange sexual dynamic.Tremendously dull in that arthouse kind of way

Or, Pinastri is the new Silencio. (I'm so glad i watched this without reading anything about it beforehand. Strickland really outdid himself here, clearly building upon the style he was developing in Berberian Sound Studio while improving in every way. Where i said that film perhaps tried to explore too many ideas to properly dramatize onscreen, here the text is just as loaded if not more so, and this time it's possible to get just lost in all the sumptuous imagery.)

Mostly texture and feel. Fitting, I guess, for a movie about its rarely touched subject: weird sexual perks. Not very surprisingly, it turns out to be a relationship movie not unlike others. And it goes nowhere. Very worthy score/songs.

i believe i will look back upon this film with affection

Perhaps what's best about this film is that it takes a subject which, thanks to certain associations audiences have with the word 'lesbian', could have been assumed to be one thing and completely turned those associations and expectations on their heads. This is a film that's not at all for titillation or anything like it. It's an examination of love with all its complexities and neuroses, and it's really rather wonderful.

The general opinion of erotic cinema is that it has one purpose, and it's not to give us engaging stories with depth or any artistic merit whatsoever. This film shows that that opinion isn't always right. This, far from lacking anything in the way of artistic integrity and quality filmmaking, is very fine indeed. Peter Strickland gives us something with real substance. The Duke of Burgundy offers the audience something really classy.

Clever, evocative film about control, power and the living hell that is having a libido. It's all dolled-up and precise, but has a sense of humor about itself that's very charming. In the last 20 minutes, it kinda loses its mind, but I don't know that the film's slow burn ever builds to a satisfactory climax.

A fascinating, intimate and empathetic portrait of two women and their curious relationship. The acting is fantastic – layered, nuanced and with a touch of camp – and the way it's portrayed adds loads to the experience. It's also dripping with style, and the whole thing has a distinct and confident voice. It seems to me that this movie functions on some kind of alien logic that I haven't quite figured out yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it another try on my next watch.

The comedic aspects maybe grate a little against the otherwise dreamy, foreboding tone. Also D'Anna started to get on my nerves in the second half. Which I think might have been intentional? But, anyway, it still worked for me.

If you've seen Strickland's other features, the kind-of-silly, odd, tense vibe throughout shouldn't be surprising. Wonderful use of color and vibrant scenery, and accurate editing for the time period of influence on this film.

Silly, but not enough to be amusing; the chemistry between the two leads is too stilted and the story is too one note to have it work on a dramatic level.

The Duke of Burgundy is a painful exercise in subtext with artsy direction that gets exponentially more boring with every minute that passes. Strickland seems to have created every shot with intent making the film competent but utterly unenjoyable and unmoving to me. D'Anna and Knudsen deliver solid performances, but their characters are so irritating that I spent a large portion of the film hoping the "Bury Your Gays" trope would show up.

as an amateur lepidopterist who likes BDSM i highly approve

Star Rating: ★★★★

It's hard not to be well disposed to a film with with a Belle & Sebastian style title sequence and full details of every butterfly and moth in the credits.

Im Grunde müsste ich hin und weg sein von Peter Stricklands neuem Film (denn ich gehöre wohl doch zur Zielgruppe: Männlich, cinephil, sogar Videothekar!). Wieder unternimmt er eine Reise zurück in die Filmgeschichte. Diesmal taucht er ein in die 70er Jahre Sexploitation mit ihren billigen Sado-Maso Effekten... die ganze Rezension gibts auf cinegeek.de

The high score is mostly for the aesthetics: the production, sound and costume design; the cinematography and music, are all astounding.

Cringeworthy movie that has a thin plot and weak acting. Nothing is sexy about it and the chemistry between the 2 main characters doesn't convince me.

2015-07-19, slow

34. İstanbul Film Festivali - Feriye Sineması: Strickland, Berberian Sound Studio'daki atmosfer yaratma becerisine The Duke of Burgundy'de müthiş bir metin eklemiş. Uzunca süredir, bir film biter bitmez yeniden izleme isteğiyle bu denli dolmamıştım.

Beautifully made film.

An extremely watered-down ripoff of sophisticated works like Pinter/Losey's "The Servant" and Fassbinder's "Petra von Kant". There's nothing wrong with "The Duke"'s execution. What makes it tedious is the immediately on-the-nose master-slave dialectic (peppered with pinned-butterfly symbolism) which drones on monotonously for the film's entirety. It's a one-note movie. Watch the old movies I mentioned instead, as they have far more substance to offer.

The movie is so precise, its even able to be a little off at times and use this against his own viewer later. Great acting, great directing, great writing.

Little slow at times, but overall great visuals and atmosphere. There are also couple of laughs throughout the movie and seriously confusing moments (mannequin?).

It's not for me

I really, really adored Berberian Sound Studio, but couldn't get into this. Will try again some day.