Liberté (2019) review

Several aristocrats - and their "mentor" Duc de Walchen (Helmut Berger) - prowl around the woods at night looking to fulfill their fantasies, with sexual escapades taking place either on-screen (or off), sometimes masked by foliage and darkness, other times it's as clear as possible (milk gets poured on a naked woman hanging from a tree, several tushies get lashed, etc.).  It's BDSM-gone-arthouse: Serra treats every frame like a classical painting (he has cited both Fragonard and François Boucher as inspirations) which somehow acts as a counterbalance to the sleaziness (watersports anyone?).  It would have been nice to have a little more subtext - the men all seek to degrade the ladies, yet they tolerate the "punishment" very well - and some of the dialogue sounds like it came out of a work by De Sade ("It's the crime that should excite you") but it, ultimately, ends up being a strange, omnisexual dream that concludes, most appropriately, with God's Flashlight telling everyone the show is over.