by Allan Fish
(UK 2014 104m) DVD1/2
Let’s see if you’ve done your job properly
p Andrew Starke d/w Peter Strickland ph Nic Knowland ed Mathias Fekete m Cat’s Eyes art Pater Sparrow, Renato Cseh, Zsuzsa Mihalek cos Andrea Flesch sound Martin Pavey, Rob Entwistle
Sidse Babett Knudsen (Cynthia), Chiara d’Anna (Evelyn), Monica Swinn (Lorna), Fatma Mohamed (the carpenter), Kata Bartsch (Dr Lurida), Eugeni Caruso (Dr Fraxini),
Upon the release of his Berberian Sound Studio a few years ago, Peter Strickland was feted in many circles, especially by critics with a solid grounding in Italian horror and giallo. Sound really was the key character in that film, and yet, while Toby Jones’ typically committed performance deserved all the praise levelled at it, the film itself tended to fade from memory even as one was watching it. Intriguing, yes, but not yet visionary.
The Duke of Burgundy is related to the earlier film in that same key element; sound. The sound designers and technicians are not normally credited herein, but not to do so here would be like denying the very fabric of the film. Burgundy is an erotic film but with no traditional visual eroticism. It concerns two women. One, Cynthia, a lepidopterist, would seem to employ the other, Evelyn, as a sort of maid, but she’s a cruel taskmaster, humiliating her, physically demeaning her, essentially enslaving her. Yet this is a voluntary slavery that becomes all the more disturbing when one realises that these ‘scenes’ of slavery are in actual fact carefully worded and rehearsed roleplays between two lovers.
Strickland’s film is remarkable in many ways, not the least of which being that there is no masculine perspective here; indeed, no male character appears at all, immediately distancing itself from the trash element of say The Story of O or, perish the thought, Fifty Shades of Grey. Yet even the notion of Sapphic relationships based on submission is not a new one. One thinks back to Campanile’s The Slave, but that was an exercise in stylish decadence which seized countless opportunities to show its slave, Eric Rohmer’s discovery Haydée Politoff, in a state of undress. Here Strickland gives us not the slightest glimpse of censorable flesh. Burgundy’s eroticism is primarily in the mind, for he knows that allowing the mind’s eye to wander, to run away with itself, can be a greater aphrodisiac than any conventionally explicit sex scene. All of which is not to say that the film isn’t visual, because it is exactly the fact that it is still so visual that makes it so unforgettable. Yet the images we see are essentially symbolic, almost proxy to our fantasies. When Evelyn is made to wash Cynthia’s underwear, she’s explicitly told not to use the machine. They’re hand-washed, so Strickland can use the sensuousness of the hands in the act of washing as a motif.
The most infamous scene, however, avoids visual motifs entirely, in which Cynthia decides to punish Evelyn for not doing her job properly by pissing in her mouth. True, we thankfully don’t see the act, but we all too audibly hear it from the other side of the bathroom door. It then becomes in itself a motif for the reversal of roles in which scenes are repeated, perhaps, and in which, while Cynthia retains her mistress role, she is in essence the one trying to please; simultaneous submission and domination. In doing so what could have been perceived as thoroughly nasty achieves a sort of shattering, tender depravity. Strickland is helped by his collaborators, not only the sound designers but Nic Knowland’s delicious photography, and the utter commitment of his two leads (especially Knudsen, impressing with the same immaculate English glimpsed in Borgen), who not coincidentally could pass as sisters, adding an almost incestuous subtext to proceedings. Not forgetting the part played by Zsuzsa Mihalek’s intricate set decoration, a feast in itself. With elements of Jean Genet, the entomological detail of Imamura and continual overt and subliminal nods to Borowczyk, it’s a film to ravish the eyes but trouble the other senses, as if being told repeatedly in a very low voice “did I say you could sit?” For what I am about to receive may my lady make me truly thankful.
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 
I wasn’t the biggest fan of BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO, and I went through some grief here at the site as others were are very big fans. Still,,despite your assertion that sound is again a vital ingredient in this film, theta re obviously far different films, and I’ll be game to see it at first opportunity. No, I have not ordered the blu-ray yet, and would much rather see it first. That one harrowing scene you recall, not actually seen is harrowing for sure, and as always splendidly written piece.
I’m certainly getting the up and down on this one. Several, whose judgement I have always admired, dismiss it as repetitive, derivative trash that goes nowhere and others, with equally impeccable judgment, are mesmerized by it.
It’s weird to call it ‘repetitive’ as a negative. It’s one of the films chief points. Would be like finding fault as ‘backwards’ when discussing MEMENTO.
To be exact, the dismissal I refer to reads thus, “Unbearable, flatly repetitive, lifeless mish-mash of Losey, Fassbinder, Rollin, Jesús Franco, third-hand avant-garde affectations, etc etc.” But, then again, many like yourself regard it very highly.
Half the directors mentioned there dream of a film this good (Franco, Rollin), but chances are that reviewer is safe because most people haven’t bothered to go that deep into their filmographies to fact check the statement.
Not sure where Losey is contained in the film either. I’m set to watch THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK again because for some reason that is where my mind kept returning after watching this one. We’ll see how my memory holds…
It’s wise to compare the film to the other notable work of 2014 eroticism, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, as they both together highlight the difference each have to one another (and mostly where BURGUNDY is so superior) and where they both break from a good many erotically charged films. To me both work (to varying degrees) because they are inherently about female sexuality and both play close attention to how women are stimulated and what women look for in the erotic arts. FIFTY SHADES attempts this by being from a source written by a female, and then hiring a female director attempting to stay faithful. It was a shame that it also had to be faithful to its promise of being a huge hit (complete with a lame release on Valentine’s Day) and featuring largely unimaginative leads (Dakota Johnson is good to great though, but I await final judgement on the work until I can see the promised uncut version) but in DUKE OF BURGUNDY we have something altogether different, a work of cutting exactness and vague wonderment. Both films see the tickle and allure of texture (both visual and sensual) as we see feathers and fetish ornaments throughout both. BURGUNDY, to me, succeeds even more on this front, because Strickland not only has touches of these textures in the film (hardly is a character seen without some striking visual costuming) and in their bedtime activities, but he also constructs the film with these visual ephemera—an erotic film that is as much a treat for our eyes and ears as it is our and the character’s nether regions.
The climax bravura sequence amounts to a frenzied kaleidoscope of flapping butterfly wings and fevered pitch score, sound effect, and edit. It’s one of the signature sequences in 2014 cinema for me, a perfect articulation of many of the themes inherent in the film (and how the film has been abstractly building up to this point). I love that we slowly enter the sequence as if we are traveling into Cynthia’s vagina as she sits uncrossed legged on a chair (though we enter via a fade to black not an EX-DRUMMER styled corridor). In Netflix’s HOUSE OF CARDS we once hear Spacey’s deranged Francis Underwood state, “everything in the world is about sex accept sex. Which is about power”. Here that’s truer still, but the power strangely isn’t meant to destruct the other but rather enhance—both attaining what they want and what they need. For a few brief moments this seems to be falling off the rails (see the above mentioned fevered climax), but by having the film so circular and repetitive in structure, we understand that these two gals are equals and exist in a relationship of autocorrection. When one is slighted an actual seen ‘control z’ undo and redo is had.
I needn’t say anything on the score that you haven’t already conveyed, Strickland clearly has a gift in the area—his BERBARIAN SOUND STUDIO is sublime in this department (its soundtrack was an underground hit in DJ circles and I’m aghast that you could count that as a film ‘fading instantly from memory’).
Superb. Great piece here on one of my supreme films of the year.