Chiara D'Anna

The repeated rituals in The Duke of Burgundy (2015) depend on an actor making carefully prescribed behaviour feel personal. Chiara D'Anna, playing Evelyn opposite Sidse Babett Knudsen, has the physical control for that task. We rate her work here because she keeps the relationship credible within Peter Strickland's elaborate romance. The performers must be precise, while letting us feel how much effort these lovers are putting into pleasing each other. D'Anna and Knudsen make that effort worth watching.

Strickland gave D'Anna her film debut in Berberian Sound Studio (2012), then cast her as a co-lead in The Duke of Burgundy. That is the substantial turn in a screen career still chiefly defined by those two films. Her background in physical theatre and Commedia dell'Arte helps explain her assurance with stylised behaviour, drawing on skills developed away from a film set. Theatre and movement teaching remain central to her work; a small filmography need not mean an actor is sitting idle.

We were moved by The Duke of Burgundy because Knudsen makes fulfilling a lover's fantasies look so tiring, without making the love itself seem foolish. Knudsen supplies much of the tenderness, and D'Anna's performance benefits from the intimacy they establish together. The dry humour works because their efforts are recognisable, however particular the arrangements. Yet the repetition also wears us down at times. D'Anna's precision cannot make every return to a ritual equally absorbing.

Those two Strickland films give us a clear reason to watch D'Anna, though a limited basis for predicting what else she might do. We would not use a small number of screen roles to promise that she can play anything. We would welcome another director putting her physical discipline to work in a less ceremonious setting, with fewer prescribed routines for a character to follow. Start with The Duke of Burgundy, provided its lovers' repeated rituals are unlikely to exhaust your patience.