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Maîtresse

Screening on Film
Directed by Barbet Schroeder.
With Gérard Depardieu, Bulle Ogier, André Rouyer.
France, 1973, 35mm, color, 112 min.
French with English subtitles.

A provincial young man develops a relationship with a professional maîtresse (or dominatrix) after being implicated in the burglary of her apartment. At ground level, everything seems legitimate but in a dungeon below the stairs, the maîtresse fulfills all the desires of her punishment-seeking clientele. Barbet Schroeder’s classic of taboo love graphically depicts the politics of sexual bondage and sits well alongside the masochistic undertones of Last Tango in Paris.

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