Catherine Robbe-Grillet doesn’t look like a dominatrix, let alone the most notorious one in all of France. She’s 85 years old. She stands at a hardly-threatening 4’11″. And, with her prim black suits and pristine white-ribbon hairband, she resembles not so much a sadist but a sweet, benevolent and uncommonly smiley nun whose hobbies include — I kid you not — making jam.

As the widow of author, screenwriter and accomplished sadist Alain Robbe-Grillet, who opened her eyes to the joys of S&M, Catherine is now the master. She commands a small coterie of dominatrixes and “endless” submissives, male and female, who conduct her elaborately staged fantasias in her enormous 17th-century chateau, where she lives with her much-younger partner, Beverly Charpentier. “There’s not age limit to the kind of thing I do,” she says coyly during a discussion at the French Institute Alliance Française. “The very well-known film director Manoel Oliveira made his last film at the age of 100, so I’ve still got many years ahead of me!”

Read the rest of my article, "S&M 101: Get Schooled by France's Most Famous Dominatrix," over at The Frisky. If you're interested in more about Robbe-Grillet, who is truly a very fascinating lady, I highly recommend Toni Bentley's excellent profile on her for Vanity Fair, "The Thin End of the Whip."