Every frame of Peter Strickland’s third feature is unbelievably beautiful – even when you can hear a woman urinating into another’s mouth (albeit behind a blue smoked glass door). Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) is Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen)’s maid and is subject to her icy, punitive will – only, as becomes evident very quickly, Evelyn isn’t actually her maid, she’s Cynthia’s lover and it is Evelyn that plans how she herself will be ‘punished’ for failing to wash the smalls properly. A disorientating exploration of the politics of control and love, The Duke of Burgundy is preposterous, fantastical, unsettling and bizarre, but it is also fascinating, absorbing, touching and visually stunning.
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in Andrew R. Hill, cinema, review