I may have been too hard on Venus in Fur in my Spotlight Cinema preview. Yes, Roman Polanski’s latest has all the trappings of a pretentious bottle drama: a theater director’s (Mathieu Amalric) casting of his lead actress is cast in doubt when a mysterious woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) makes a very late, very unannounced appearance at the Parisian theater. Over the next 90 minutes, Amalric and Seigner trade barbs, stage direction and revealing biography. Did I mention they’re the film’s sole characters? They’re the film’s sole characters.
Critics of Carnage‘s tight focus shouldn’t get their hopes up, and Venus in Fur‘s final notes hew too close to the fictional director’s insistence on ambiguity. Its biggest flaw however, is not its lack of clarity but rather its servicing of it. In his review posted earlier today, Capital Times’ Rob Thomas faulted the italicized French dialogue Amalric and Seigner speak when uttering lines from the play. I’m inclined to agree. The emphasized font saps out the fun when subtitles make it clear where the play’s drama ends and where the film’s begins.
Or does it? Rob also mentions the shaggy-haired Amalric’s resemblance to Polanski. What’s more, Amalric finds an uneasy but undeniable chemistry with Seigner, who’s married to Polanski in real life. Such secondary connections more than invite the notion that Venus in Fur, ostensibly a film about a director’s aspirations and (lack of) control, is just as much about Polanski as it is his proxy. Is Seigner playing the role in the playbill or the one in the script? Or is she closest to herself? The fun lies in parsing out who’s saying what and as whom.
- Venus in Fur plays Wednesday, Oct 15 at 7:00p in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art Lecture Hall. Admission is $7 to general audiences and FREE to MMoCA members.