Polanski has succeeded in making what is essentially a play with one set and two actors into a successful movie. Interestingly the set is a set in an actual theater and what we take as a play is meant to be an actual play. Polanski managed with one set in Carnage although it had four actors rather than two. But Venus in Fur drills far deeper into human sexuality, exhibiting with many prescient nuances the dominance-submissiveness power struggle that seesaws between two lovers and is mirrored more widely in society at large. Within any group of two, one will normally become the dominant figure and the other the submissive one. Otherwise, the group will have internal tensions that will often lead to a rupture. Or worse.
A playwright, Thomas Novachek (Mathieu Amalric), is calling it quits for the day where he's blown the entire afternoon in the theater auditioning for the female lead for his new play, Venus in Fur, which he adapted from the 1870 novella, Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a lower nobleman (Ritter) from the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. It is from Sacher-Masoch of course that we get the terms masochism and masochistic. Venus in Fur explores this aspect of human sexuality. No wonder Freud―another Austrian―came along soon thereafter and attributed almost all personal ills to sex. Oh those raunchy Victorians! Underneath their demure and placid exteriors were steaming sex fiends.
Thomas is thoroughly disgusted with the women who audited for the female lead, Vanda von Dunayev, and is on the verge of leaving the theater when a woman, whose first name by seeming coincidence is Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), arrives all soaking wet from the rain storm outside and is completely disheveled. At first she seems almost incoherent and Thomas tries to maneuver around her and get out of the theater to escape her. But her force of character draws him in and keeps him there. And once there she slowly but powerfully takes control over Thomas and turns in a tour de force in her portraiture of Vanda von Dunayev/Venus to the extend that she makes suggestions how the play should be rewritten. By the end of the movie Thomas has morphed under Vanda's influence into the main male character in the play, Severin von Kushemski. In the end he is left in the darkness of the theater dressed in female garb with lipstick on his lips and bound to a theatrical prop whose likeness to an enormous phallus is unmistakable. Vanda/Venus has trumped, in spades.
There is one other very interesting vignette the movie brings out. That of the self-defining moment. A brief passage in time in which a person instantly realizes a deep indelible truth about themselves that defines who they are.
This movie follows Polanski's signature formula: exploring the bizarre and the unusual in human relations with no holds barred. You either like this sort of thing or you don't. I like it obviously and have seem many in his oeuvre.
I'd love to see what he would have done with The Painted Bird, a story that most certainly explores the bizarre and the unusual in human relations with no holds barred. The Painted Bird is the story of a young boy separated from his parents in war-torn Poland during World War II during which he has many violent and shocking encounters, chiefly with the local peasants but some with German soldiers. I still vividly remember reading it in one sitting on a June night 43 years ago. And as far as I can tell from Polanski's life story on IMDb, it mirrors to some extent the experiences of the unnamed boy in the book. Sheer coincidence I am presuming.
I might add that Seigner at 47 (when the movie came out in 2013) is one smoking hot pistol of a lady. A perfect Venus in fur.
I saw this movie at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, California. I give it a smoking 9 out of 10.
A playwright, Thomas Novachek (Mathieu Amalric), is calling it quits for the day where he's blown the entire afternoon in the theater auditioning for the female lead for his new play, Venus in Fur, which he adapted from the 1870 novella, Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a lower nobleman (Ritter) from the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. It is from Sacher-Masoch of course that we get the terms masochism and masochistic. Venus in Fur explores this aspect of human sexuality. No wonder Freud―another Austrian―came along soon thereafter and attributed almost all personal ills to sex. Oh those raunchy Victorians! Underneath their demure and placid exteriors were steaming sex fiends.
Thomas is thoroughly disgusted with the women who audited for the female lead, Vanda von Dunayev, and is on the verge of leaving the theater when a woman, whose first name by seeming coincidence is Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), arrives all soaking wet from the rain storm outside and is completely disheveled. At first she seems almost incoherent and Thomas tries to maneuver around her and get out of the theater to escape her. But her force of character draws him in and keeps him there. And once there she slowly but powerfully takes control over Thomas and turns in a tour de force in her portraiture of Vanda von Dunayev/Venus to the extend that she makes suggestions how the play should be rewritten. By the end of the movie Thomas has morphed under Vanda's influence into the main male character in the play, Severin von Kushemski. In the end he is left in the darkness of the theater dressed in female garb with lipstick on his lips and bound to a theatrical prop whose likeness to an enormous phallus is unmistakable. Vanda/Venus has trumped, in spades.
There is one other very interesting vignette the movie brings out. That of the self-defining moment. A brief passage in time in which a person instantly realizes a deep indelible truth about themselves that defines who they are.
This movie follows Polanski's signature formula: exploring the bizarre and the unusual in human relations with no holds barred. You either like this sort of thing or you don't. I like it obviously and have seem many in his oeuvre.
I'd love to see what he would have done with The Painted Bird, a story that most certainly explores the bizarre and the unusual in human relations with no holds barred. The Painted Bird is the story of a young boy separated from his parents in war-torn Poland during World War II during which he has many violent and shocking encounters, chiefly with the local peasants but some with German soldiers. I still vividly remember reading it in one sitting on a June night 43 years ago. And as far as I can tell from Polanski's life story on IMDb, it mirrors to some extent the experiences of the unnamed boy in the book. Sheer coincidence I am presuming.
I might add that Seigner at 47 (when the movie came out in 2013) is one smoking hot pistol of a lady. A perfect Venus in fur.
I saw this movie at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, California. I give it a smoking 9 out of 10.