Adapting David Ives’ Tony-award winning play for the screen, the kinkily mischievous, wonderfully witty and claustrophobically light-headed Venus In Fur sees Roman Polanski doing what he does best: bringing theatricality to film, classicism to eccentricity, and imbuing an intimate story with a liberal dose of playfulness and perversion.
The always impressive Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, The Grand Budapest Hotel) stars as Thomas, the frustrated “adapter” of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s classic tale of female dominance and sadomasochism. When the erratic whirlwind Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) bursts into his theatre demanding an audition, the two begin blurring the lines between fiction and reality as their “audition” begins to ooze sexual tension and personal power play.
Opening with a sweeping, Luhrmann-like shot that glides over Paris and in through the doors of a theatre, Polanski plays with the theatricality of the piece; this is a play-within-a-film about a play-within-a-play. Seigner (Polanski’s wife) proves irresistible, morphing from an intolerable flake into a devilishly insightful vixen with hilarious wit and perfectly balanced sensuality. As she lights the scene, dresses both herself and Thomas for their roles and perfectly evokes the play’s dominant lead – while also offering some post-modern, feminist critique – the film becomes a carnivalesque sexual pressure-cooker. Will the blurred lines ever become clear again, and where, as Thomas asks, “will this all end?”
While the script is witty and the acting magnificent, the director’s history adds an inescapably uncomfortable air to some of the interactions. As Amalric (a Polanski lookalike) worships ambiguity and rails against PC interpretations of sexual dominance and child abuse, too many of the lines feel like Polanski’s personal mission statement. It’s a layer that may detract from the otherwise fiendishly playful tale of tease and sleaze.