Mano Destra (Italian for “right hand”) is a 1986 Italian-language Swiss art film written, directed by, and starring Cleo Übelmann. Shot in black and white, it studies lesbian erotic objectification through a long, deliberate act of consensual bondage: one woman tying another until rope, posture, and gaze replace ordinary sex-scene grammar. Images later appeared in the 1988 book The Dominas – Mano Destra by the Cleo Übelmann-Group, extending the film into print fetish culture.
This is not a narrative thriller with a dungeon subplot. It is art-house SM—duration, ritual, and the politics of looking. For adult viewers of lesbian BDSM on screen, it remains a cult reference because bondage is the event itself, not a teaser before intercourse.
Form and Theme
Übelmann places lesbian domination and submission in a ceremonial frame. The restraint sequence is extended; the camera treats tying as labor, intimacy, and composition. Black-and-white photography cools the temperature into sculptural body and rope. The title’s “right hand” reads as craft and control: the dominant hand that ties and authors the scene.
Critical Reception
In Women and the New German Cinema, Julia Knight describes the film as exploring liberating possibilities of sadomasochism while subverting expectations of what SM looks like. In New Queer Cinema, B. Ruby Rich called it “deserving of instant cult status.” Cherry Smyth, in “The Pleasure Threshold: Looking at Lesbian Pornography on Film” (Feminist Review 34, 1990), wrote that its imagery is “beyond sex,” like an ice-cold fruit drink one is forbidden to taste—desire as death, nothingness, and yet “utter completeness.” Those readings treat lesbian SM cinema as theory-bearing art, not only niche porn inventory.
Influence
Peter Strickland has cited Mano Destra as a favorite and an inspiration for The Duke of Burgundy—another European art film that takes female D/s ritual seriously as form. Catalog entries at the BFI, IMDb, and UK distributors help track prints. Further reading starts with Smyth’s essay (doi:10.2307/1395314) and the 1988 image book. Watch it as ritual of rope and gaze: consensual lesbian bondage staged as art film, still useful for mapping how European underground cinema taught later fetish filmmakers to slow down and look.
