Under My Thumb

The tug-of-war of wills that occurs in relationships, turning bedrooms into a battlefields and simmering resentments into boiling cauldrons of rage, can make for some most stimulating cinema, as proven in this program of movie grudge matches featuring couples hetero and homo, relationships sexual, platonic, and hovering in that gray area in-between, and some particularly ingenious instances of “topping from the bottom.” With doomed love in Buenos Aires (Happy Together), masterful mindfucks from Isabelle Huppert (Elle and The Piano Teacher), a grinding war of attrition between a painter and his model (La Belle Noiseuse), and a ghostly bit of gaslighting at an ornate luxury hotel (Last Year at Marienbad), there’s no end of mind games and psychological chess maneuvers in this program of deviant delights that tests the adage “All’s fair in love and war…”