Review: Venus in Fur
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: B+] Roman Polanski has been shadowed by the fact that he sexually assaulted a minor and fled the legal consequences. And for much of that time, critics have attempted to find a line between where the man stops and his work — nearly always interesting — begins.
POWER PLAY: In Roman Polanski's latest film, Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigneur, the director's real-life wife) tries to convince a theater director that she is the best actress for the lead role.
City Paper grade: B+
Flaubert said that the artist should be like God in his work: everywhere sensed but nowhere seen. But artists are not divine, and the human selves they reveal can be ugly. For 37 years, Roman Polanski has been shadowed, as he should be, by the fact that he sexually assaulted a minor and fled the legal consequences. And for much of that time, critics have attempted to find a line between where the man stops and his work — nearly always interesting — begins.
With Venus in Fur, Polanski blurs that line — erases it, even, pushing so hard that the paper starts to shred. Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) has written an adaptation of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch’s novel and he’s auditioning actresses, alone, in a Paris theater under a driving rainstorm. In struts Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), who seems an immediate fit for the part. She’s cunning and domineering, wearing naught but lingerie under her trench coat — a fantasy come to life. But whose fantasy? Not mine, Thomas insists. Not so fast, says Vanda.
Vanda’s audition, which takes her so thoroughly into the world of the play that we hear the tinkle of china as Thomas stirs invisible tea with an invisible spoon, starts off as a battle of wits. She wants something; the director has the power to grant her wish. But it soon becomes clear — to us long before Thomas — that their conflict is a play of Vanda’s own creation, and that it is not she who will be finally stripped bare. The director thinks he is invisible in his work, but he hides in plain sight, both fearing and longing to be discovered.
Polanski, a Holocaust survivor whose pregnant wife was murdered as part of a bloody spectacle, has both known and caused more trauma than any person should. What’s striking, and discomfiting, about Venus is how fluidly the directors inhabit the role of both perpetrator and victim, and how neither character stays one or the other for long.
