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Viewers might be initially skeptical about an S&M love story between two women directed by a man, but writer-director Peter Strickland is aware of the dangerous ground he’s treading on, and refuses to allow the Duke of Burgundy to become the exploitative film it threatens to be. Instead, Strickland has managed to render a complex, exoticised and stigmatised world in terms anyone who has ever been in a relationship can understand.

The film grips you instantly with its playful, colourful opening titles, which include credits for “lingerie” and “perfume by Je suis Gizella”. Strickland and his cinematographer Nicholas D. Knowland are clearly having a lot of fun as they intercut images of the various stages in the development of a butterfly with shots of the young, meek Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) cycling through a lush countryside, on her way to work at the luxurious home of an older woman, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen). When she arrives, Cynthia opens the door with a brusque, “You’re late”, and immediately sets Evelyn to work on a series of demeaning chores, such as hand-washing her underwear and polishing her boots, and her incompetence leads to her being severely punished. The most graphic, and most discussed, of these punishments takes place off-screen, where Evelyn receives a golden shower. When this sequence of events and dialogue is repeated verbatim the next day, we realise that this is all part of a consensual master/servant game between the two women. It also quickly becomes clear that Evelyn, ostensibly the masochist (or “bottom”) in their roleplay, is in fact the sadist in their relationship, and has scripted all of their exchanges in advance on neat white cards. When Cynthia misses her cue, Evelyn hisses at her like a prompt from backstage.

Strickland has described the film as “chuckling at the practicalities” of BDSM relationships, and it’s these awkward behind-the-scenes moments from which the film draws its humour. During a scene of watersports, Cynthia gets stage fright, and from outside the bathroom door we hear Evelyn tersely whisper, “Try turning the tap on!”. As she introduces a new scene into their roleplay, Evelyn asks Cynthia to “surprise” her with it — yet she engineers even the element of surprise by scolding, “you were a bit slow to surprise me the last time”, and instructing her to do so within 24 hours, but “not in the first hour, or in the last hour”. In one heartbreaking scene, Cynthia tries to tell Evelyn she loves her, only to have Evelyn ask her to repeat the scripted lines of punishing dirty talk instead while she masturbates. Afterwards, she suggests Cynthia should “try to have more conviction in [her] voice next time”.

As Evelyn’s needs become more demanding, fissures begin to appear in their relationship, and Cynthia grows weary of the monotony and repetition of their 24/7 role-playing. We see her tearing her silk stockings in exasperation, longing to replace the elaborate lingerie sets Evelyn has purchased for her with comfortable flannel pyjamas. She becomes increasingly upset locking Evelyn in the small coffin-like box she sleeps in every night. Essentially, it is this discord that the story is most interested in. While the lovingly-crafted 1970s softcore aesthetic reveals Strickland’s passionate devotion to the European sexploitation films of Jess Franco, there is very little nudity or graphic sex shown on screen. Strickland instead uses the context of BDSM to explore a couple’s struggle to meet each other’s conflicting needs, and to question how much you should change yourself to become the person your partner wants you to be.

It’s debatable as to whether The Duke of Burgundy should be labelled a “lesbian” story, as men are entirely absent from the world of the film. Outside of their roleplaying, Cynthia and Evelyn frequently visit the local entomology institute, studying in the library or attending lecturers with an entirely female population of lepidopterists. There are even a number a mannequins scattered in the audience of these lectures to emphasise the unreality of this world. All of the women travel on bicycles, use manual typewriters, and wear costumes that don’t seem to refer to any particular period in time. Evelyn makes reference to a washing machine, but we never see it. Although shot in Hungary, the film is a medley of unplaceable European accents. By refusing to specify a setting, the world of Strickland’s imagining is all the more seductive.

The film is perhaps better considered as a series of carefully sculpted moods, rather than one coherent story, and as a result it doesn’t quite know where or when to end. However, Strickland’s erotic, dreamlike fable is so visually, audibly and sensually rich you may never want it to.

The Duke of Burgundy opens February 20 at the Irish Film Institute and Light House Cinema. Read our interview with Sidse Babett Knudsen here.