Gaze

La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in fur)

Crit

I rarely flog Yale books, but you won't be able to buy this for months anyway, so what's the harm? I just edited a terrific little manuscript by the heavyweight film writer David Thomson--Why Acting Matters, in our Why X Matters series--and the timing for seeing this film could not have been more perfect, because it's all about . . . Acting!

Set in a theater, involving only two people (the always engaging Mathieu Almaric and Emmanuelle Seigner, who got the role on merit, not just because she happens to be married to the director, one Roman Polanski), the film is based on an acclaimed play by David Ives (who cowrote the screenplay with Polanski, and also contributed to the English subtitles of the French film), which is in turn based on the 19th-century Austrian novel Venus in Furs, by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, whose name is the source of a particular variety of sexual pleasure. Got all that?

Thomas has written a play based on Sacher-Masoch's novel, not, he insists, on anything to do with his life--but he's Acting! Vanda shows up hours late, she says (but she's Acting!), for her 2:30 audition for the part of, yes, Vanda, the play's dominatrix (who's Acting!). She's ignorant and empty-headed (Acting!), but when she finally persuades David to hear her read--and, critically, to read with her--he discovers that she is a brilliant natural (Acting!) actor, perfect for the part, and perhaps for more than that. He's engaged (Acting!) and not interested in Vanda's extrathespian appeal (Acting Acting Acting!), and though he allows her to direct him to a truer reading of Severin, he emphatically doesn't share that character's need for sexual humiliation (you know).

The rare film for which "stagy" is a compliment; an orgy of sexual frustration whose ultimate central theme is introduced early but seems like a misdirection, such that its misdirection-seeming is itself a misdirection.