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| Grade: B- |
*This review was originally posted on Movie Mezzanine.
The later years of Roman Polanski’s career, after the turn of the century, have taken him to vastly different highs and lows. From his somber, Palme-winning WWII epic to the chilling, seaside world of British politics, the unimaginative adaptation of a beloved classic to the colorful adaptation of a modern theatrical masterpiece, Polanski has challenged himself in different arenas few directors of his age dare to do. Like Carnage, his latest, Venus in Fur, is also inspired by a play and restricted to a single stage but, as we have come to expect of the director, the result is hardly similar to his previous work.
Adapted from a David Ives play that takes its story from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, Polanski’s Paris-set film tells the story of Thomas (Mathieu Amalric), a theatre director about to stage his interpretation of Masoch’s novella. In the original text, a man named Severin becomes fascinated with a woman named Vanda to such heights that he begs her to take him on as her slave. She does so, taking him to Florence with her as a servant. The joy with which Severin welcomes her orders has had a hand in coining the term “masochism.”
When the film opens, an audition session has ended and a frustrated Thomas is venting about the actresses who tried for the role of Wanda on his cell phone. The actresses trying to fulfill his fantasy version of Wanda were young and beautiful but not much else, and Thomas wants for the brains of someone who understands the character. Before the call is over, enters a woman called Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner). She is older than Thomas’s expectations and her chatty, disheveled personality isn’t immediately convincing. But she travels the distance between her reality and Thomas’s fantasy with such ferocious energy that the director agrees to let her try for the part.
