dir. Monika Treut
1985 // 1 hr 24 mins // Digital Projection
Wanda (Mechthild Großmann) is a dominatrix who runs an S/M performance space in Hamburg where she stages elaborate sexual rituals for a discerning audience. Cruelty is her profession, but constructing traps for her lovers—including the lovelorn Gregor (Udo Kier), the naive and innocent Justine (Sheila McLaughlin), and the jaded Caren (Carola Regnier)—is her specialty. All know the rules of the game, but not all are willing to play their roles—but the show must go on…
Inspired by the writings of the Baron Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Monika Treut and Elfi Mikesch’s Seduction: The Cruel Woman (Verführung: Die grausame Frau) is a coolly sensual tribute to masochism and obsession in all of its forms.
“Sex may just be a passing fad. The age of tenderness is over. What is being presented: the world of sadomasochistic symbols, the rhythm of suffering, the pleasure of torment.”- Treut/Mikesch
“This is S/M by Avedon, outfits by Dior.” - Film Comment
FEMALE MISBEHAVIOR: THE FILMS OF MONIKA TREUT
Ever since the release of her debut feature Seduction: The Cruel Woman (made in collaboration with filmmaker and longtime cinematographer Elfi Mikesch) in 1985, Hamburg-based filmmaker Monika Treut has devoted herself to depicting and documenting queer lives on screen, exploring the mysteries and ambiguities of gender, and transgressing repressive sexual mores and ideas. Fiercely controversial in her native Germany—where Die Zeit once proclaimed that “films like Monika Treut’s are destroying cinema”—Treut found much more acceptance for her work in the burgeoning queer film festival and independent film scenes in America, leading to several decadeslong collaborations with queer icons like trans poet Max Wolf Valerio and “post-porn modernist” Annie Sprinkle.
FEMALE MISBEHAVIOR brings the core of the first half of Treut’s career together in the form of recent restorations by the Hamburg Kinemathek. Encompassing both narratives (Virgin Machine, My Father is Coming) and documentaries (Didn’t Do It for Love, Gendernauts), these seven films are fearless explorations of sex and gender that trace the more taboo and less-documented arcs of queer history of the late 20th century.