This BDSM film is so raunchy, it makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like a classic office romance – with one major difference.
The Duke Of Burgundy is the BDSM film that makes Fifty Shades Of Grey look like a classic office romance.
While Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia Steele was busy signing nondisclosure agreements to become a subservient plaything for Jamie Dornan’s billionaire Christian Grey in the movie adaptation of E L James’ novel, writer-director Peter Strickland’s erotic masterpiece throws out the Hollywood cliches entirely. It plunges straight into a lush, intoxicating world of sensory obsession – one entirely devoid of men.
Instead of having a wealthy male executive wield the whip, The Duke Of Burgundy – available to stream on Tubi – flips the script by placing absolute control in the hands of a female student and servant.
It wasn’t always intended to be this way, Strickland has said of the script, which started out far more textbook.
“The first draft had both sexes – they had jobs, they lived in the city,” he explained during a BFI London Film Festival Q&A. “It had quite the social element, but I wanted to exclude that and just only concentrate on this idea of compromise in a relationship, in terms of who is the one compromising and who is repressing their desires to give the other one peace.”
Set in a dreamlike European countryside, the film follows Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a stern lepidopterist (a person who studies moths and butterflies), and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), her eager student, also employed as her maid.
By day, Cynthia lectures while Evelyn cleans the estate, enduring strict reprimands for the slightest mistake. By night, the dynamic between the two women transforms into a carefully scripted ritual of fetishism: foot washing, bondage and nights locked inside a custom wooden trunk.
The ultimate twist? Evelyn is the one driving every ounce of the cruelty. She writes the scripts for each scene, demanding ever-harsher degradation from her employer. Meanwhile, a thoroughly exhausted Cynthia grows weary of the forced dominance, nursing a bad back and longing for quiet domesticity over daily punishment.
The film’s peak tension hits when Cynthia hears Evelyn call out their safe word from the wooden trunk she asked to be tied up in – then has to decide whether to respond or not. The scene becomes a sensory symphony of creaking leather, whispered commands, and rustling silk that turns restraint into foreplay.
It was so intense that even Strickland could barely handle what he was filming.
During the same BFI London Film Festival Q&A, Knudsen revealed the director’s anxiety during certain moments on set: “He hates to watch – during the masturbation scene, he came in and [said], ‘Oh, we have to do it again. I can’t see it. Oh God! I feel so bad about it.’ And I think it was really suffering!”
That awkwardness translated into unshielded intimacy. Strickland merged ’70s erotica with universal relationship hurdles to "take something that I’m assuming the majority of an audience would find alienating or ridiculous,” he said, and show that “the further you get, you realise that the dilemmas are the same as everyone.”
That friction makes the power dynamic magnetic. D’Anna noted her own shift while playing her scriptwriting character, explaining in the Q&A that she initially viewed Evelyn as manipulative and cruel, metaphorically pinning Cynthia like a butterfly, “beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, but dead”.But then she realised her behaviour stems from “a compulsion, something that she can’t live without, and in that sense there is a tragedy and a fragility as well”.
Sumptuously scored and dripping with atmospheric dread, The Duke Of Burgundy proves that true erotic cinema doesn’t need slick boardrooms or pop psychology; it just needs a deep understanding of human obsession. Step into Strickland’s gothic parlour – just don’t expect to leave untied.
The Duke Of Burgundy is streaming on Tubi.
