VENUS IN FUR. Eternal Battle Of The Sexes And A Struggle For Power

The camera leads us in a long take through a rainy and stormy Paris, guiding us to the setting, a brightly lit theater. We then realize that we have been seeing through the eyes of the film’s main character, actress Vanda Dunajev. Through her eyes, we see director Thomas Nowaček, finishing a day of casting for a play based on the prose of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The theater still has the set of the previous play, a musical adaptation of John Ford’s western Stagecoach. The background, juxtaposed with Masoch’s themes, creates a deliberately somewhat grotesque effect. Venus In Fur

The gazes of the two characters meet. A mutual game begins, leading from dislike, through fascination, to complete domination of one by the other…

Although the film takes place in the intimate world of a Parisian theater and relies solely on the relationship between this pair, it lacks theatrical artificiality. Instead, there is great tension between the characters and virtuoso acting. Excellent camera work, a lot of dynamic music, lively editing, with the camera sometimes on a steadicam, sometimes on a dolly, so the viewer feels the difference; changing points of view ensure that unintentional theatricality is avoided, making this work cinematic in the best sense of the word. Director Roman Polański presents us with the level of quality known from his best films. He also returns to themes characteristic of his earlier work: an unfriendly external world, an intimate game between a small number of characters where a woman causes misfortune or destructively influences the protagonist (Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac, Bitter Moon), and the transformation of male identity into female (The Tenant), which ultimately leads to the disintegration of personality. In the lead role, Polański again cast his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, who usually plays various versions of the femme fatale in his films, as in The Ninth Gate, Frantic, and Bitter Moon. Venus in Fur is the best film role of the granddaughter of the great Louis Seigner from the Comédie Française, a worthy continuer of the family’s exquisite acting craft. Why is Vanda the role of a lifetime for Emmanuelle Seigner?

Polanski’s Mirror

Tired from a day of unsuccessful casting, director Thomas Nowaček (Mathieu Amalric) rejects the late-arriving actress. She seems to him like yet another uninteresting woman among a group, one of whom “even had iron teeth.” With boldness, Vanda tries to push for an audition, behaving nonchalantly and provocatively, saying she only “skimmed the play.” The director promises his fiancée over the phone that he’s wrapping up the audition and will be home for dinner, trying to discourage Vanda and leave the theater. The film is clearly divided into intervals. The second part begins when an undeterred Vanda dons a long period dress, the costume of the play’s character, physically resembling her, symbolically “entering her skin.” Paradoxically, now that Vanda covers her previously exposed charms, the director becomes interested and allows the audition. A dialogue begins between the two characters, exchanging casual opinions about the play Nowaček wrote and was to direct. It also begins a hesitant, purely physical fascination, what the characters call “chemistry,” with Vanda stretching and tempting like a cat.

Another meta-theatrical level emerges, suggesting that the film is more than just a study of female nature. It is a work about creation and a portrait of the creator in a broader sense: director, writer, playwright, actor.

Roman Polański was immediately interested in Venus In Fur, David Ives’s play, staged on Broadway. He quickly read the copy sent to him and decided to write the screenplay together with David Ives. He “filmed” the text, retaining large parts of the original. Polański saw himself in this screenplay as in a mirror. Film Nowaček mentions that his wife could be a woman who would be his muse. The relationships between the characters are reminiscent of Polański’s earlier films. Even the director Nowaček is played by an actor strikingly similar to Roman Polański – Mathieu Amalric, known from Julian Schnabel’s film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and the supporting role of Dominic Greene in the Bond film Quantum of Solace.

In Venus In Fur Polański has created a compelling female portrait, seemingly crafted for Emmanuelle Seigner to play. Full of nuances, ambiguous, revealing unexpected character traits, and aiming to show the essence of female personality, the role’s text created the possibility of showing something metaphysical, approaching the numinous. As in his best films, Polański has transcended the psychological portrait to reach a level of transcendence. However, he maintained a greater distance from reality and deliberately gave the film a comedic tone in some scenes.

Vanda: Eros and Thanatos

Vanda Dunajev associates the title Venus in Fur with a song by The Velvet Underground. This is a motif from the prose of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, processed through popular culture. The term “masochism” originates from the author’s name. We hear about all this in the opening dialogues of Polański’s film. This motif, present in contemporary culture, is treated here with distance and sometimes comedy.

An even greater distance is created by the auto-thematic phenomenon of “theater in film.” The second film interval appears when Vanda the actress, in her period dress, begins speaking the words of Vanda the play’s character. This not only arouses interest but also the admiration of director Nowaček, as if the director were more interested in the character from the play than the actress herself. Therefore, it is also a film about creation. Nowaček slowly enters the role of Severin Kushemsky, the play’s protagonist, identifying with him. Vanda initially discovers that the director wrote the play about himself, something he consciously resists. A peculiar game of masks begins, slowly uncovered. It turns out that Vanda the actress was pretending to be nonchalant, ignorant, and unsophisticated, and knows the play’s text by heart. She interprets the text and the character excellently, ultimately also identifying with the role and becoming Vanda Dunajev, the character from the play. She also reveals her excellent knowledge of the director, which terrifies him. Gradually, dark themes emerge. The game of mistress and servant, used for pleasure and arousing passion, begins to associate with suffering and crosses permissible boundaries. The boundaries of theatrical convention are also repeatedly crossed, and Nowaček and Vanda, using the play’s words, begin to express their own passion and fascination. Thomas repeatedly balances on the edge of art and life, afraid to cross it, especially when the crossing involves oppression. He also fears engaging in a relationship with Vanda. Phone calls from his fiancée, to whom he must explain himself, effectively hinder him. Besides the elements of erotic oppression present in the dialogue and stage situation, where Thomas, in the nineteenth-century play’s convention, must serve his mistress as a servant, references to Bacchantes from Dionysus’s retinue appear from the beginning. They symbolized unrestrained love and the threat of death, as in the myth, they killed Orpheus when he refused to participate in Bacchanalia, saddened by Eurydice’s death.

Polański skillfully portrays the growing tension between the characters of Venus In Fur and the increasing dark atmosphere, behavior that goes beyond jokes until the appearance of a knife in a dangerous situation frightens us. This knife is later forcefully stuck into the floor. The terror increases, and Vanda, both the character from the play and the actress, becomes increasingly demonic. The eternal myth, linking Eros with Thanatos, presents the dark side of Aphrodite and one of the roles of Anima – the image of a man’s soul, this demonic one. Both the play’s character and the actress Vanda slowly become both Venus and Bacchante. Alexandre Desplat, the music composer, perfectly understood the film’s idea. The dynamic music, accompanying most scenes, at the film’s end, changes to Greek bouzouki, accompanying the dance of the threatening goddess.

Between Eros, the myth of love, and Thanatos, the myth of death, an eternal struggle takes place, resulting in civilization; without this struggle, there are no creative acts. Man oscillates between these two poles. But civilization “can only exist when the deepest human aggressive instincts are restrained” (Rollo May, The Cry for Myth). Polański’s film is more than a story about the eternal battle of the sexes; it is also a cinematic metaphor for the struggle for power, which occurs not only between a woman and a man. It helps to understand the elements of sadomasochism that accompany every struggle for dominance and power. Therefore, it is an extraordinary film in every respect.

Venus with a Mirror

Polanski’s mirror is the camera. Cinematographer of Venus In Fur, Paweł Edelman, who has collaborated with Roman Polański on The Ghost Writer, The Pianist, and Oliver Twist, has already developed a style that harmonizes with Polański’s. This style includes many close-ups that capture the characters’ reactions, dynamic camera movements, and the final splendid tracking shot that takes us out of the theater, out of a world on the edge of danger. It’s as if we are following the gaze of Venus-Vanda, who leaves the theater and looks at its doors from outside. Interestingly, we no longer see Vanda, the author of the gaze; as viewers, we become Vanda. A mystery remains.

Polanski and his cinematographer allow us, in the Venus In Fur ‘s final credits, to savor images featuring the motif of Aphrodite with a mirror. They show paintings Venus with a Mirror by Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, and Velázquez. Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and the mythological Venus de Milo also appear, eternal visual archetypes of our Mediterranean culture.

Words by Małgorzata Kulisiewicz