Maîtresse — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Welcome!

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

LIQUID TRUTH SERUM IPA from DOGFISH HEAD BREWING provided us with the base we needed to discuss this unknown and little seen BDSM erotic drama that really takes the cake. Pull a chair up to the table and join us for a really great feast.

Bon appétit! 

Fetish aficionados will find much to admire in Barbet Schroeder’s groundbreaking depiction of a BDSM dungeon ruled by Bulle Ogier’s emphatically charismatic dominatrix Ariane in this satisfying romantic drama.

Released in 1976, Schroeder’s exploration of a behind-the-scenes life of a professional dominatrix features one of Gerard Depardieu’s debut film performances. Bulle Ogier is stunning, and Depardieu is fully formed.

This movie is hot, hot, hot.

Barbet Schroeder’s use of real lifestyle subs adds a dramatic scene of kinky CBT with a [highly skilled] stand-in dominatrix, lends the story an air of undeniable authenticity. The shocking sequence caused the film to be banned in some countries upon its release.

Nestor Almendros unfettered cinematography drinks in the unity of opposites that exist between the casual brutality of the real world as contrasted with the hyper-sensualized acts of humiliation and physical abuse that Ogier’s psychologically confident dom inflicts on her slaves.

Crucial to Schroder’s non-judgmental treatment of sadomasochism is Roberto Plate’s fascinating production design that separates Ariane’s duplex apartment via a sliding coffee table that opens to reveal a retractable staircase descending into her well-equipped dungeon.

The boundaries of Ariane’s lifestyle are clearly delineated. With the aid of her ‘secretary,’ Ariane dresses in a tight corset, costume, and make-up to transform into a cruel mistress capable of executing the most painful of punishments on her willing clients.

At its heart, Maîtresse is a love story about two free-spirited lovers whose relationship kicks off at the deep end of the psycho-sexual spectrum, and must backtrack from there into a mutual understanding of respect while maintaining their thirst for adventure.  

Rated X. 108 mins.

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Welcome!

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

Writer/director Peter Strickland (“Berberian Sound Studio”) explores the power dynamics involved in a lesbian sadomasochistic relationship that exists in a utopian atmosphere of rural isolation.

This is an erotic drama for adults. Leave "50 Shades of Grey” to the kiddies.

This nuanced sexual tale of erotic BDSM topping from the bottom is tantalizing, titillating, and dirty in a way that only the human imagination can explore with such deviant romantic sophistication on the big screen without going full porn.

Mistress/Slave.

Yummy.

Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen plays Cynthia, a butterfly expert who resides alone in a lush country mansion somewhere in Europe. Cynthia’s full-time maid Evelyn (wantonly played by Chiara D’Anna) seems to take payment for her frequently spotty work, in staged punishments that her mistress Cynthia doles out with stern deportment and appropriately black fetish attire. Formal costume precision is required. So too is a proper attitude of distant attraction.

Evelyn may be marginal in performing her house chores, but she makes up for it in the bathroom, at the service of her full-bladdered mistress. A purposely-unwashed pair of Cynthia’s soiled panties gives cause for a human-toilet golden shower session behind closed doors that leaves Evelyn hungry for more, more, more, more toilet action in the future.

Strickland’s sensual visual touches of stylistic homage to softcore masters such as Jess Franco give the film a sustained sense of lush erotic and dramatic tension, but he allows the racy narrative to go flat. Evelyn’s outré desire for humiliation drives a lesbian relationship centered on fulfilling the couple's fetishistic desires.

Evelyn's coquettish submissive character gains more pleasure than her older dom Cynthia does from their scripted BDSM sessions together. Equality is not all it's cracked up to be.

The film’s hook rests with the couple’s bottom-topping paradigm, which proves to be the key to the women's complex sensual connection. Evelyn leaves specific handwritten instructions for her mistress Cynthia to fulfill.

The submissive is calling the shots. Perhaps this is the secret to the recipe. This self-scripted method for Evelyn to achieve her desired fetishistic scenarios has intrinsic limits that Cynthia isn't able to fulfill, at least not yet.

Although it’s clear that Evelyn is working up to serving as a full-duty (#1 & #2 — shocking) human-toilet to her more mature mistress, the filmmaker inexplicably reneges on the dirty motivation. What could have given the film a truly startling aspect evaporates when romance deposes the fetishistic elements of the women’s unique bond.

Rather than the specially designed toilet chair she requests, Evelyn has to settle for a trunk where she is imprisoned overnight at the end of her mistress's bed.  

“The Duke of Burgundy,” with its perfectly disguised title, could serve as a compass-marker for other (more daring) filmmakers to follow in its footsteps.

Mainstream cinema and pornography continue to overlap. Where are the daring, transgressive filmmakers of the 21st century? No modern-day John Waters? What is wrong with the world?

Neither entirely frustrating nor satisfying, here is an enjoyable erotic film populated only with female characters. As such, "The Duke of Burgundy" affords the audience a much-needed break from Cinema's predominance of male influence, albeit from the director himself.

It would be interesting to see how a more daring [female] filmmaker would follow the story’s fetishized elements toward their logical trajectories.

Perhaps then Evelyn could achieve the transformation into a human-toilet that she desires. What then?

Not Rated. 104 mins.

BITTER MOON — CLASSIC FILM PICK

         Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Welcome!

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

A be-all-and-end-all example of erotic satire, Roman Polanski’s co-written adaptation of Pascal Bruckner’s novel is fraught with romantic, sexual, and social tension.

"Bitter Moon" bristles with a sensuously dark humor steeped in experience.

Situated on an ocean cruise liner en route to India via Istanbul, the binary storyline connects two married couples in an extended game of seduction whose rules and goals are movable as they are transgressive.

Uptight Brit Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his deceptively suggestible wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) are at an impasse in their marriage of nine years when they meet Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) and her wheelchair-bound husband Oscar (Peter Coyote).

Polanski’s impeccable casting choices create a boundless sense of dramatic energy that alternately simmers and boils.

Oscar, a failed author, invites Nigel back to his private room (Mimi has her own room) for daily talks to divulge his long and troubled relationship with the exotic Mimi, to whom Nigel is obviously attracted. Oscar holds nothing back. His graphic description of his many and varied sexual encounters with Mimi make Nigel visibly uncomfortable, but excite his carnal desires for Oscar’s mysterious wife.

If the version of "Bitter Moon" you see doesn't include Mimi giving a golden shower to a television set in front of Oscar, you're missing out.

Polanski’s beautifully composed flashback sequences of Oscar’s and Mimi’s relationship illuminate Nigel’s remembrances about how meeting Mimi on a bus in Paris led to his obsessively attempting to find her.

Dreams fulfilled can turn into nightmares over time.

What begins as an ideal romantic relationship for Oscar and Mimi, filled with unbridled sexual exploration of BDSM, descends into abuse and dysfunction when Oscar begins to hold Mimi in unfounded contempt. What a fool Oscar proves to be.

Oscar’s unfathomable cruelty will earn him a cold dish of revenge served up on a daily basis.

He gets the abuse he so desperately desires.

Psychological and physical twists culminate in an unpredictable display of misplaced passion that makes good on a story about confused people acting on primal impulses.

“Bitter Moon” is a suspenseful adult movie about the discrepancies between love and lust, and between loyalty and communication.

Rated R. 139 mins.