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[THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY]

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY

Day after day, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna) act out a simple yet provocative ritual that ends with Evelyn's punishment and pleasure. As Cynthia yearns for a more conventional relationship, Evelyn's obsession with erotica quickly becomes an addiction that may push the relationship to a breaking point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaTTr5-JmuU



UNDER THE SKIN

From visionary director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) comes a stunning career transformation, a masterpiece of existential science fiction that journeys to the heart of what it means to be human, extraterrestrial--or something in between. A voluptuous woman of unknown origin (Scarlett Johansson) combs the highways in search of isolated or forsaken men, luring a succession of lost souls into an otherworldly lair. They are seduced, stripped of their humanity, and never heard from again. Based on the novel by Michel Faber (The Crimson Petal and the White), Under The Skin examines human experience from the perspective of an unforgettable heroine who grows too comfortable in her borrowed skin, until she is abducted into humanity with devastating results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoSWbyvdhHw



Secretary

Sadomasochism provides the backdrop for a very unusual employer/employee relationship in this very offbeat romantic drama from filmmaker Steven Shainberg. Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a shy young woman, who, after a brief spell in a mental institution, is released in the care of her overprotective mother (Lesley Ann Warren) and hard-drinking father (Stephen McHattie). Hoping to make good on her own, Lee begins looking for a job, and in her free time indulges in her odd habit of inflicting pain upon herself in various ways. Lee is hired as a secretary by E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a grim and ruthlessly efficient attorney who warns her that her work will be both dull and demanding. Lee takes to the job with genuine enthusiasm, and while she's recently acquired a new boyfriend, Peter (Jeremy Davies), she's far more intrigued by Grey's coldly patrician demeanor. While Grey often criticizes Lee, she seems to thrive on his abuse, but one day he crosses a line when he insists upon spanking her after some minor mistake. Lee quite enjoys the treatment, and wants it to continue, but Grey can no longer take pleasure humiliating Lee when he knows that she likes it; he fires her, despite her pleas to be allowed to stay. Finally discovering the key to her sexual and emotional needs, Lee tries to persuade Peter to be rough with her, but he simply doesn't have the taste or talent for it, and Lee soon maps out a last-ditch effort to win back her position with Grey, whatever the cost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFma24S-Uvw



SEX AND LUCIA

Lucia is a waitress who lives and works in Madrid. After what she believes to be the loss of her boyfriend, the tortured writer Lorenzo, she flees to a secluded island that he had often told her about. There she meets Carlos and Elena, who have also run away to the island to escape personal tragedy. Unbeknownst to them, all three have a connection to Lorenzo. Elena met him many years ago on that same island and enjoyed beautiful, anonymous lovemaking with him in the sea by the light of a full moon. 9 months later, Elena gave birth to Luna, but never managed to find Lorenzo. Carlos was the stepfather of Belen, who disappeared after she unwittingly caused the death of Luna. As she hears more about the past of her two new housemates, Lucia is reminded of the book Lorenzo was writing, a tale about a journey into a dark, deep past that brought on his depression. Soon, the lines between fact and fiction begin to fall apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cB0Fu88ayc



IL PORTIERE DI NOTTE

The psychology of a sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi storm trooper and the concentration camp prisoner he loved provides the basis of this provocative, at times sexually and violently graphic drama. The story is set in the late '50s at a Viennese hotel that is owned by and plays host to former Nazis who get their kicks at the sadistic hands of the hotel porter, the ex-trooper. Most of them are facing trials for their war crimes, and all of them have taken care to get rid of any possible witnesses to their atrocities. The trooper too feels safe. His illusion is shattered when a woman and her husband check into the hotel and he recognizes her as the woman with whom he had a very kinky relationship in the concentration camp. They soon rekindle their painful relationship and episodes from their past and present are graphically depicted. They remain heedless of the attempts of the other guests to stop their twisted affair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3iUpDnRcU



Professor Marston & The Wonder Women

In a superhero origin tale unlike any other, the film is the incredible true story of what inspired Harvard psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston to create the iconic Wonder Woman character in the 1940's. While Marston's feminist superhero was criticized by censors for her 'sexual perversity', he was keeping a secret that could have destroyed him. Marston's muses for the Wonder Woman character were his wife Elizabeth Marston and their lover Olive Byrne, two empowered women who defied convention: working with Marston on human behavior research -- while building a hidden life with him that rivaled the greatest of superhero disguises.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4cMJ3rzdpI



SHAME

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a New Yorker who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his wayward younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's insular life spirals out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24cjqfVv1fs

[Endless Love by Scott Spencer]

Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Spencer's hypnotic novel—not to be confused with the two sappy screen adaptations by directors who clearly stopped reading after the title—insists that the sort of love that knows no bounds is the most dangerous of all. Two doomed young lovers share sex so intense it borders on the surreal, culminating in a marathon fueled by grief, mania, and menstrual blood.

"Her muscles were rigid and she held her breath. Ribcage turned into two parallel rollercoaster tracks. Rump puckered. You're not supposed to hold your breath when you have an orgasm. Jade learned that in a book and taught it to me. 'You're living, not dying,' she said, then."


The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Set against the backdrop of the Prague Spring, The Unbearable Lightness of Being examines the relationships of four flawed, capricious lovers. Sex, adultery, and intimacy appear in terms both romantic and realistic. In one instance, you're awaiting an impending orgasm during a character's ill-advised tryst with a stranger. In another, you're contemplating the mechanisms of sewage systems as she takes refuge in the nearest bathroom. The pain and beauty she and the other characters encounter offer a master class in sensual metaphysics, one that stimulates more than just the physical senses.

"The reason she refused to get down on all fours was that in that position their bodies did not touch at all and he could observe her from a distance of several feet. She hated that distance. She wanted to merge with him. That is why, looking him straight in the eye, she insisted she had not had an orgasm even though the rug was fairly dripping with it."


G. by John Berger
This extraordinary novel, a retelling of the Don Juan story, follows a rake's progress through Europe on the eve of the First World War. Written by the British art critic, essayist, and novelist Berger, who recently died at ninety, it's shot through with rich visual language, ominous invocations of the social and political forces about to tear the world apart, and erudite meditations on the nature of love, sex, and desire. Oh, and a few crude drawings of penises.

"He has convinced her that the penis twitching in the air above her face is the size and color and warmth that it is entirely because of what he has recognized in her. When he enters her, when this throbbing, cyclamen-headed, silken, apoplectic fifth limb of his reaches as near to her center as her pelvis will allow, he, in it, will be returning, she believes, to the origins of his desire. The taste of his foreskin and of a single tear of transparent first sperm which has broken over the cyclamen head making its surface even softer to the touch than before, is the taste of herself made flesh in another. This can never stop, she whispers, slowly and calmly."