• Rating:
"I want a woman who would take me away from myself. But to do that, she would have to be better than me; she must have a brain, and not just a pussy."
(Quote H. Miller, Tropic of Cancer).
Thomas is a writer on his first experience as a theater director. He has adapted an 1870 text by Leopold Von Sacher Masoch, “Venus in Fur”, and now he is desperately searching for an actress who is not just a beautiful woman, but who has brains and understands the character to interpret it at its best. He's having a shitty day; an endless sequence of dime-a-dozen actresses without a glimmer of culture and acumen. It's raining cats and dogs outside, and the camera with a progressive and slow zoom in a continuous shot enters the theater where the entire plot of the film will unfold.
Polanski copies himself using the structure of the splendid “Carnage” and bets everything on the quality of the two carefully chosen actors and on the quality of the witty, cynical, brilliant, sarcastic dialogues that make you laugh heartily and reflect. Personally, I found myself trapped in my seat until the surprising final scene. For someone who appreciates the just enumerated features and does not find theater boring, “Venus in Fur” can be considered a must. Like “Carnage” the duration of the work is appropriately compact and exceeds just over an hour and a half.
The encounter between Thomas (director) and Vanda (actress) is as unexpected as most of the best and juiciest love stories. Two seemingly opposite people who first study each other, then taunt each other, and finally, after much hesitation, shed the false mask to reveal their most intimate, hidden, and perverse side. Over the years, Polanski has always sought to highlight the foolish attempt of people, imposed by society, to appear more clean and respectable compared to the dirty reality. Often we believe we are free when in truth we are trapped in a ridiculous number of recurring schemes and circumstances from which it is almost impossible to escape. In these 90 minutes, the director enjoys exposing the perverse art of seduction. Taking up the initial quote from Henry Miller, (read that book, it's not at all a mere sequence of gratuitous vulgarities), the film tells us about the desire to find a person so special for whom submission becomes a painfully irresistible pleasure. Thanks to a superb Seigner and a convincing Mathieu Amalric, the film proves to be a work of prestige.
The particularly adverse weather, I hope, encourages you to consider the idea of going to the cinema.
Loading comments slowly
