Review: Venus In Fur

We’re stalking down a smart Parisian street flanked by trees. Thunder and lightning rip through the night sky like the by-product of a supernatural visit. We veer off the street towards a theatre, alone, slightly dishevelled and dropping its aitches. Now we creep purposely through the double doors, down the stairs and through into the theatre proper like a regal Sam Raimi raiding a deserted log cabin.

Through the doors we spy writer-director Thomas, a self-important avant-garde intellectual furious that no actress can deliver his ideal of his female lead. He’s a small man having a big tantrum: “half looked like hookers, half like dykes,” he rants into his phone. Thomas has just adapted Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel “Venus in Furs,” the book that inspired the term Masochism.

The novel and Thomas’ adaptation feature a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is besotted with a woman, Wanda von Dunayev, entering into a contract to become her slave, degrading himself in the process. Consumed by his woe and surrounded by the set for a musical version of John Ford’s “Stagecoach,” it takes a while for Thomas to register the wet and bedraggled entity that bundles through the theatre doors.

And what an entrance. Vanda is uncouth and unwashed; a rain soaked Debbie Harry with a foul mouth and a dog collar. Thomas is aghast that such creatures exist, for him actresses (and possibly women) are a necessary evil who at best might not fuck up his grandiose designs for his plays. He tries to dismiss her attempt at reading for the part, she’s too late, all the other actors have left, and she’s not even on his call sheet.

Vanda doesn’t take no for an answer despite her “skimpy resume.” She blurts out the sob stories carefully constructed around her S & M getup and her panda eyes are meticulous as she invades Thomas’ space, carefully driving him back towards the stage, cutting off his escape routes and diminishing his chances to refuse her the chance of a reading. Doesn’t he know a real actress when he sees one?

Thomas is bullied and cajoled, embarrassed when faced with tears and emotion, his superior soul wounded when Vanda dares to refer to the work as “porn.” How dare she! Doesn’t she know a man of culture when she sees one? Can’t she recognise a man who can see beyond the cheap sexual thrills and look into the real crux of the human condition? Vanda gets her chance, skilfully changing the lighting (and sticking her gum under the desk) before magically producing the entire script.

Now Vanda is transformed, her sophistication mesmerising, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich and Madonna haunt the stage. Her timing is perfection, the physical embodiment of the character. Thomas doesn’t know whether to fuck or flee as his mask of intellectual indifference is gradually peeled away to reveal the sexist hypocrite he always was. They probe and taunt each other, flipping between fiction and reality but Thomas always concedes ground–even when we think he has the upper hand.

At the age of 80 Roman Polanski still revels in this environment, using his camera only when absolutely necessary letting his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner as Vanda and his lookalike Mathieu Amalric as Thomas walk each other around in ever decreasing circles. The ease, at which both actors slip in and out of character is breath taking, enhanced by the director’s use of sound effects when they mime making coffee and Alexandre Desplat’s understated score.

“Venus In Fur,” like any Polanski film is a complex watch, an embolden version of David Ives’ two-hander play.  A film adapted from an adaptation about an adaptation is an interesting conceit and one at which the master director excels. Polanski, nearing the end of his life, like Kubrick did with “Eyes Wide Shut” references much of his previous work, especially “The Tenant”, “Cul-de-Sac” and “Rosemary’s Baby” yet the complexity is derived not from Polanski the director but Polanski the man.

At one stage Vanda argues that the play is about “child abuse” as Severin recounts his defining childhood memory of being whipped and humiliated by his aunt and her servants. Thomas dismisses this as puerile nonsense but one can’t help but feel that the mysterious Vanda could be the embodiment of Samantha Gailey–now Samantha Geimer finally confronting and humiliating Polanski after years of living in his shadow following that infamous “Vogue” shoot in Jack Nicholson’s house.