Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner in Venus in Fur.
Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner in Venus in Fur.
The new film by the infuriatingly patchy Polanski derives from an 1870 novella by the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (whose name gave us the word "masochism"), and which has inspired no fewer than six other film versions, most of which seem to have attracted more attention from censors thanpaying audiences.
Like his last work, Carnage, Polanski's version adapts a play -- this one by John Ives, which was a moderate Broadway success in 2011. He sets it in Paris, entirely in a run-down theatre.
Here Thomas Novachek (Amalric) is a director about to head home after a fruitless day of auditions when a new contender comes in from the storm outside: gum-chewing, slatternly Vanda Jordan (Seigner, brilliant in her opening scene), is harried and late and begs him to let her read.
The play Novachek is casting is called (intertextuality alert!) Venus in Fur and within minutes we learn that Vanda shares (almost) her character's name; that she knows the entire script, despite having been given only a few pages; and that, at first scatter-brained, she inhabits the role with a chilling authenticity. The penny drops, and it doesn't bounce much after that.
The shifting relationship between the actress Vanda and actor/director Novachek and between their two characters (Wanda and Severin) moves from coy to erotic to sadomasochistic as they step in and out of role (oddly, the subtitles italicise the play's words, removing a level of ambiguity that the original French must have).
Never moving beyond the obvious, it adds up to a psychosexual drama that would have been bold in the 60s, but seems at once tame and slightly creepy here.
Given that Seigner is Polanski's real-life wife; that Amalric bears an uncanny similarity to a young Polanski; and that one of Novachek/Severin's costume changes makes him a dead ringer for the title character the filmmaker played in his The Tenant (1976), it's tempting to conclude that the entire thing is a rather distasteful joke at the audience's (and the actors') expense.
