The Duke Of Burgundy – Memphis Flyer

The Best Films of 2015: A Video Countdown (2015; edited by David Ehrlich)—The third time’s the charm for Ehrlich, the film critic and Rolling Stone writer whose most recent supercut is garnering plenty of rapturous, well-deserved praise from websites and magazines alike. And it couldn’t have arrived at a better time, because the ever-rising tide of new releases each year makes it impossible for a non-bedridden, non-cyborg cinephile to prioritize or even process them all. movie-induced exhaustion is realer than ever, and critical judgment suffers as a result. But Ehrlich’s crisply edited and shamelessly affectionate tribute to the year in movies is film criticism at its best and most helpful. It is both a tantalizing viewing guide and a minor Vimeo masterpiece.

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2015: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from david Ehrlich on Vimeo.

The Best Films Of 2015: A Video Countdown

Ehrlich’s 2015 list is more eclectic than the ones he put together in 2014 and 2013, which means that at least 15 of his 25 choices either 1) haven’t been mentioned anywhere in the Flyer film section or 2) haven’t been shown in Memphis yet (or ever). Luckily, you can find many of his more obscure choices on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes or Netflix. They are well worth seeking out. Ehrlich has excellent taste, which is what people like me ought to say whenever we stumble across fellow admirers of such singular works as The Duke of Burgundy and Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on A Bench Reflecting on Existence.

The countdowns always begin with a musical overture, and this year’s version, which slathers Rhapsody in Blue onto Joe Manganiello’s convenience-store striptease from Magic Mike XXL, might be the most joyful mash-up since Freelance Hellraiser’s “Smells Like Booty.” But wait, there’s more! The music from Paul Thomas Anderson’s new, MUBI-only documentary Junun inadvertently provides a mind-altering optional soundtrack for a montage of melting, decaying images from Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room. A verse from Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” (“Some boys take a beautiful girl/and hide them away from the rest of the world”) smartly re-contextualizes the numerous golden-hued clips of Charlize Theron kicking ass in Mad Max: Fury Road. The klutzy majesty of Mistress America’s Greta Gerwig is contrasted with the desperate determination of Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter’s Rinko Kikuchi. A ghostly computer image of Marlon Brando quotes Macbeth in the beginning, and a stick figure cautions us: “We mustn’t linger. It is easy to get lost in memories” at the end. All in all, it’s the best free Christmas gift a jaded moviegoer could ever hope for.

Grade: A

The Duke of Burgundy (2014; dir. Peter Strickland)—Although I missed Strickland’s smooth, golden-toned Eurotrash homage-cum-S&M romance during its extremely limited theatrical run last spring, I resolved to keep half an eye open if it ever resurfaced. In the meantime I gritted my teeth through some disappointing late-night Cinemax fare and refused to watch Fifty Shades of Gray as a matter of general principle. But now that Strickland’s third feature is finally available to purchase or watch via streaming video, I’m glad I waited.

Strickland’s puzzling previous film, 2012’s Berberian Sound Studio, followed a distressed and repressed English sound-effects man (Tobey Jones) who traveled to Italy and was eventually driven mad by (and/or possibly sucked into) a rough cut of the low-budget horror picture he was hired to work on. This crazy premise worked better than expected because Jones’ careful performance and Strickland’s studious recreation of 1970s-era post-production facilities gave the film’s avant-garde autodestruct climax some necessary and appropriate social and psychological context.

In spite of its risqué subject matter, The Duke of Burgundy is an altogether gentler and more compassionate film. It’s considerably less confrontational in its sound/image experimentation, and it’s more attuned to its characters’ delicate emotional states. It better be, too, because there isn’t much plot to worry about. Mostly we eavesdrop on some crucial scenes from the romance between fortysomething Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and twentysomething Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), a pair of lepidopterists whose emotional and romantic needs involve hand-washing expensive lingerie, carefully scripting multiple master-servant scenarios on high-class stationery, and locking people in wooden chests for the evening.

Sounds strange and sort of hot, doesn’t it? Well, not so fast. As these surprisingly tasteful sexual games continue, they start to resemble any one of a dozen regular routines and rituals around which most long-term relationships are organized. The exotic and complex articulation of Cynthia and Evelyn’s desires are slowly brought back to earth through hesitations, clarifying remarks (“Try to have more conviction in your voice next time”) and moments of off-book cruelty. What’s sold as a boundary-pushing piece of erotic transgression gradually transforms into something rarer and probably better: a story about two people trying to work it out.

Nevertheless, the film also deserves a merit badge for the way it turns on this wildly original line: “So had I ordered a human toilet, none of this would have happened?”

Grade: A-