The Duke of Burgundy (2014)

Wonderful Movie

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

This is extremely slow paced and boring movie and it is very hard to sit thru the entire movie. It certainly has no mystery element nor is it a drama. It's a documentation of lesbian relationship of 2 characters who were on screen for 99% of the movie and 1% was any other characters altogether. Watch if you have certain sexual preferences as you may find it a bit interesting, otherwise it is a Boredom of Burgundy.

Duke of Burgundy takes the concept of old sadomasochistic lesbian movies and digs deeper to the psychology of its characters. The director is trying to do what the legendary Jess Franco and Jean Rollin often did with their lesbo shockers, but he is not as successful. But its a wonderful experiment that works on many levels. The cinematography are acting are very sharp. The plot is thin and not much action takes place and it all could've been a much better short film, but its well written and directed anyway.The most interesting part of the film is the suggestion that lesbianism is a kind of fetish and psychological crutch for emotionally damaged people. He likens its roots to the roots of S&M. This is a very controversial angle in our modern times, but I think its refreshing. Duke of Burgundy is not a sentimental, pandering or fetishistic examination of its subjects. Its a very cold and analytical one. And its interest and sympathy for its characters are more pure than the films that inspired it. I only wish it was as exciting and entertaining as Vampyros Lesbos or Rape of the Vampire. But maybe it wouldn't work as well if it was as exploitative.

The story of a middle-aged woman, Cynthia, a wealthy academic who lives in her home with her lesbian lover. Both women appear to have personality disorders that do not appear to have been diagnosed. Cynthia has severe control issues and Evelyn appears to be an enabler; both of them feeding off the other while role-playing a sadomasochistic creepy fetish. It was interesting to see the madness that goes on in these type of domestic abuse relationships - but especially the twisted reality of mental illness and how any form of abuse if not dealt with can turn you into a monster. The director did well to tell the story of the hidden horrors in these types of relationships and there was a scene toward the end of the movie that really showed the character, Cynthia, revert to her inner child and place of pain. There appeared to be an improvement in their relationship after that. Good directing but the story was under-developed leaving those great scenes a little confusing and incomplete.

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.