15 Essential Movies For LGBT* Pride Month

Peter Strickland's The Duke Of Burgundy was strongly influenced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, and it's clear from the film's central focus on a domineering, affluent woman and the woman who works in her home as a maid, who is also her lover. As with Fassbinder's movie, Strickland is as interested in power games as he is in sex play.

Submission and domination preoccupy the central themes of The Duke Of Burgundy, with the dominant Cynthia playing along with Evelyn's fantasies until she devises new forms of punishment to satiate her own desires. Strickland has a keen eye for visual poetry (as was evident in his previous hit, Berberian Sound Studio), not least in the butterflies which echo the lovers' safe word, 'pinastri'.

Another fine example of erotic cinema which stimulates the mind as well as the libido, The Duke Of Burgundy is a film which teases out greater depth on repeated viewing.