Seduction: The Cruel Woman

Wanda (played by Pina Bausch dancer Mechthilde Großmann) is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As an artist, she specializes in the staging of elaborate S&M fantasies, while her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American “trainee,” and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.

Presented as part of the film series Female Misbehavior: The Films of Monika Treut and Elfi Mikesch, in collaboration with Anthology Film Archives and Salzgeber Club

Verführung - Die grausame Frau
Dir. Elfi Mikesch, Monika Treut
1985, 84 minutes, 35mm-to-DCP

With Mechthild Großmann, Udo Kier, Sheila McLaughlin, Peter Weibel, Carola Regnier