While his previous feature Berberian Sound Studio made for an intriguing visual and aural experiment, it was more a testament to see what director Peter Strickland would be doing next. We now have the results, as The Duke of Burgundy premiered at Toronto International Film Festival this fall and will enter release sooner than expected in January. Starring Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D’Anna, it follows a woman who studies butterflies and moths tests the limits of her relationship with her lover.
We said in our review, “At its best, Strickland disorients us until we aren’t certain what is real and what isn’t. And whether he wants us to see metaphor or not, you can’t help trying to reconcile the insects with the girls, once depictions of metamorphosis shine throughout from costuming, role playing, or the sense that an ornate punishment box only vacated with the safe word ‘pinartii’ is a cocoon. There’s blatant repetition, vantage point reversals, double exposures, and visually stunning transitions from a character’s gaze through a microscope into a fantasy playland of desires. These are minutely different from passages we’ve already seen yet are just as surreal until normalcy appears as nightmare, sadism as dream.”
The first enthralling, seductive trailer, which puts the previews for Fifty Shades of Grey to shame, has now arrived and can be seen below:
The Duke of Burgundy opens on January 23rd.