The Duke Of Burgundy

Soft lesbian porn with sadistic play acting at the centre of a plot that is paralysed by pretension has the flavour of crushed cockroaches in a vegan goulash.

Don't ask why, or when, or where. What happens in private should remain private. You wish!

Writer/director Peter Strickland, the only male on the set - the duke is a butterfly, pinned in a glass case with dead moths - insists that the psychology of pain as a sexual stimulus be given its head, so to speak.

Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna) bicycles to the big house every morning. She is the maid who must endure the foibles of Cynthia (Sidse Babette Knudsen), an ill tempered, humourless, demanding and bitchy boss. Humiliation is the name of the game - humiliation as foreplay.

Cynthia studies lepidoptery. Occasionally she lectures all female students when she's not squatting on her maid's face, or locking her in an oak chest.

This nasty film has a twist. Do you want to hear it? Do you want to see it?

If S&M is normal what is it about Brief Encounter that moves people to tears?