This is all I ever dreamed about.

The Duke of Burgundy

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Is Peter Strickland on a mission to redress every ’70s exploitation subgenre as critically lauded art fare? His last film, Berberian Sound Studio, took its cues (most audio, rather than anything grizzly) from Italian giallo. Now he’s at it again, turning to the Euro sleaze of Jess Franco. I’ve only seen a couple of Franco’s pictures (about a hundredth of his filmography, then), but his influence is readily identifiable from the freeze frame titles on in. The Duke of Burgundy is sumptuous, seductive and hypnotic, but it left me admiring from afar. Which was essentially also my reaction to Berberian Sound Studio.

There’s more than a touch of Peter Greenaway to Strickland’s style and careful compositions, albeit with greater genre awareness and slightly less attention given to the rhythms of image and score. The title song, from Cat’s Eyes (Faris Badwan and Rachel Zeffira) could come straight out of a ‘70s woodland psych-out. The rest of the score tends to the chorally elegant, erotic and dreamy. Which fits the general tone. Dream-like, but in a very precise way.

Just like Berberian, Strickland positions himself to claim classiness and acclaim by eschewing the very substance that attracted to audiences to the genres he transforms. With Berberian there isn’t a mutilation, slashing or dismemberment in sight. With Duke, there’s not a sniff of nudity, and the erotic content is very much strained.

Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) meet for bondage and discipline sessions, the older Cynthia playing the dominant employer and Evelyn the submissive maid. Evelyn cleans the house. And cleans the house. And cleans the house some more. Cynthia reprimands her for doing a poor job and eventually pees in her mouth. Such is their sensual routine.

It quickly becomes clear (well, at Strickland’s elegant pace, quickly is an exaggeration) that this is all at Evelyn’s behest, however. Cynthia is the reluctant and weary partner, fulfilling her role for fear of losing her younger catch. There’s a sense of inevitability that this cannot last, but a clinging on by both partners that leads to emotional impasse come the conclusion. We hear Evelyn’s repeated voiceover breathlessly state, “This is all I ever dreamed about”, yet it is very far from Cynthia’s greatest desire. Ultimately neither will be happy in their rehearsed abandon; Cynthia cannot wait to exit the room when conversation turns to purchasing a human toilet.

Strickland’s picture isn’t so complex in terms of character, although both actresses, and particularly Borgen’s Knudsen, lend great depth to their roles. Like the distracting and possibly or possibly not relevant study of Lepidoptera, sequences play out in miniature and through repetition. So Strickland creates a rhythm that is both fascinating and detached. This may be the intent. We study the characters just as they study moths.

There’s a deadpan sense of humour too, such that, while the emotional centre is quite sad and affecting, there’s a sense that this is all an elaborate game to Strickland (another thing he has in common with Greenaway; intellectual remove). He has created a world of undefined era, one apparently matriarchal to the extent that there isn’t a man to be seen. But for no discernable reason. And there are mannequins sitting in the audience at lectures (apparently a nod to Franco). I particularly liked “Featured Insects in Order of Appearance” during the end credits.

Like Berberian Sound Studio, the soundscape of The Duke of Burgundy is fascinating, sometimes resembling like a Doctor Who sound effects record (except the subjects are macro-acoustic moth sounds). Both pictures feature a central figure isolated at their centre, one by work and the other by pleasure. Strickland’s films are to be admired, and Nic Knowland’s cinematography is to be venerated, but they lend themselves to respect rather than adoration.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

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I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

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I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

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Death to Bill and Ted!

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Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

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Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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