The Duke of Bur­gundy and the mys­te­ri­ous lan­guage of love

Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Bur­gundy is many things: sen­su­al erot­i­ca; pro­gres­sive LGBT cin­e­ma; even roman­tic com­e­dy. But the most pow­er­ful sto­ry it tells is about two indi­vid­u­als and their oppos­ing lan­guages of love.

Cyn­thia (Sidse Babett Knud­sen) and Eve­lyn (Chiara D’Anna) live togeth­er in a ridicu­lous­ly opu­lent house in an unspec­i­fied Euro­pean vil­lage pop­u­lat­ed only by women. Strick­land doesn’t touch upon explana­to­ry details. His focus is pure and height­ened and fixed on the way the two women interrelate.

Their spe­cif­ic dilem­ma is how to rec­on­cile Evelyn’s masochism with Cynthia’s more tra­di­tion­al tastes. Their strug­gle iso­lates the ongo­ing issue that indi­vid­u­als with­in cou­ples face: how to please both them­selves and their lover. A poignant but humourous scene shows a dec­la­ra­tion of love impa­tient­ly shot down in favour of dirty talk. There is a point to which this type of clash is inevitable and a point to which it is gra­tu­itous­ly painful and a klax­on call for part­ing. Strick­land brings to life a rela­tion­ship where the love is not gone but pain — in and out of S&M role-play — is an ongo­ing under­cur­rent that con­stant­ly reframes our under­stand­ing of how these women are coping.

Strick­land uses a spe­cif­ic, cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly reward­ing and sen­su­al type of domes­tic set-up to explore pow­er, but the strug­gle between gen­er­ous love and per­son­al need is uni­ver­sal. ​“The nature of life is there’s always some­thing that has to be sac­ri­ficed…. When I think of peo­ple that I know there’s always some­one who has to com­pro­mise,” Strick­land said in a recent inter­view with LWLies.

Strick­land has cit­ed Ger­man new wave direc­tor Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder as an inspi­ra­tion, specif­i­cal­ly his 1975 film Fox and his Friends. ​“When Fass­binder brings his boyfriend to din­ner his par­ents don’t even ques­tion it,” explains Strick­land. ​“In the late ​’70s it was always about accep­tance when you bring the boyfriend over for din­ner. But in Fox and His Friends it was just like bring­ing your girl­friend for din­ner. They spoke about oth­er things.” The Duke of Bur­gundy has tak­en the lead of its inspi­ra­tion. It is so earnest­ly at the core of a love quandary that it is not about the par­tic­u­lars of sexuality.

Anoth­er Ger­man named Rain­er elo­quent­ly expressed a solu­tion to dis­con­nec­tion in cou­ples. Poet Rain­er Maria Rilke wrote: ​“Once the real­i­sa­tion is accept­ed that even between the clos­est peo­ple infi­nite dis­tances exist, a mar­vel­lous liv­ing side-by-side can grow up for them.” While this is a salve for a cer­tain lev­el of benign sep­a­ra­tion, there is a type of dis­tance that lends itself more to pain, doubt and mad­ness than any­thing like mar­vel. The com­mu­nion-sep­a­ra­tion bal­ance has to be deter­mined by indi­vid­u­als, rather than a cou­ple hive-mind. A cou­ple can only func­tion when two peo­ple are in har­mo­nious accord over the state of their togeth­er­ness. In The Duke of Bur­gundy the cam­era lingers on the women’s faces sep­a­rate­ly as fre­quent­ly as it pho­tographs them togeth­er, search­ing sto­ical per­for­mances for clues as to per­son­al happiness.

Sidse Bab­bett Knudesen’s soft voice imbues Cyn­thia with melan­choly as she ful­fils her role and orders her sub to per­form domes­tic chores. She sits alone at a type­writer or alone in front of a mir­ror, nev­er ful­ly con­vinced by her task, huge eyes flit­ting rest­less­ly and unsee­ing­ly. As Eve­lyn, Chiara D’Anna also seems caught in rever­ies. Eve­lyn wash­es Cynthia’s ele­gant satin under­wear hyp­no­tised by the rain­bow pat­terns that dance across the suds. She is slack­ing off her flesh and blood part­ner in favour of per­son­al fan­tasies. Despite the women being each other’s sole human con­tact, imag­i­na­tion nudges them apart.

The pow­er imbal­ance here is that one woman is act­ing for her­self while the oth­er acts for her loved one. The film is a slow sub­mer­gence in the ques­tion of whether Cyn­thia will accept pow­er bal­ance for the sake of Eve­lyn. What hap­pens when inequal­i­ty is accept­ed in the name of love and desire? Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey explores the same ques­tion from two con­flict­ing points of view. Talk­ing about his for­ma­tive years as a ​‘sub’, Chris­t­ian Grey says, ​“When I gave up con­trol I felt free from respon­si­bil­i­ty and deci­sion-mak­ing. I felt safe.”

Sub­mis­sion bequeathed him a cocoon away from the storms of soci­ety. Anas­ta­sia Steele is not as con­vinced of the ben­e­fits of aban­don­ing her free will. The strength of her iden­ti­ty is pro­tec­tion for her and a phe­nom­e­non for him in that it offers a depar­ture from the famil­iar pat­terns of S&M pow­er play. It is ter­ri­fy­ing for him to go off-script, off-cue and sim­ply fol­low feel­ings. Her pow­er is his weak­ness and vice ver­sa. When sex­u­al tastes are in oppo­si­tion, love becomes a bat­tle for dom­i­nance. As for who will come out on top, Fass­binder offered the fol­low­ing view:

“The one who loves or loves more is obvi­ous­ly the infe­ri­or one in the rela­tion­ship. This is to do with the fact that the one who loves less has more pow­er, obviously.”

Strickland’s style is gen­tler and more abstract than his Ger­man fore­bear. Cyn­thia and Eve­lyn try to side­step pow­er issues in order to live side-by-side. They cycle togeth­er, sleep togeth­er and fuel lep­i­dopter­ist obses­sions togeth­er. Amid the dusky light and deca­dent fur­nish­ings of their man­sion, Nicholas D Knowland’s sen­su­al cin­e­matog­ra­phy cap­tures the shared life they try to snatch from the jaws of their war­ring predilec­tions. Cyn­thia inch­es her skirt up as Eve­lyn kneels at her feet. We hear the cloth scratch­ing against her stock­ings, Strick­land fram­ing the point of fric­tion in inti­mate close-up. This is the camera’s way of evok­ing Cynthia’s sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the sharp­ened focus of her lover’s charged gaze. S&M nev­er seemed so mer­ci­ful and compassionate.

Eve­lyn is either not will­ing or not able to be as flex­i­ble with love’s lan­guage. She is a slave to her desires, child-like and id-dri­ven, whis­per­ing her dis­dain at a but­ter­fly lec­ture and sus­cep­ti­ble to anoth­er woman who shares her bed­room tastes. (Could stream­lined taste be more of a deter­min­er of cou­ple­dom than attach­ments forged on emo­tion­al grounds?)

Some­times Cynthia’s role seems more like a care-giv­er than a lover. The nar­ra­tive pro­gress­es to Cat’s Eyes’ oth­er­world­ly sounds and engage­ment with the abstract realm of emo­tion­al deci­sions height­ens. Will she sur­ren­der her iden­ti­ty to serve her lover’s insa­tiable sex­u­al appetite? Or are the forces of self-preser­va­tion more pow­er­ful than love? And if wil­ful love can’t keep peo­ple togeth­er, what on Earth can?