Movie review: Venus In Fur

For the most part, the film sticks loyally to the original script, with only the scale and detail of the props – the whole interior of an old theatre rather than only the stage or a rehearsal room – having been upscaled.

It’s a complex, layered piece that plays with the power of language, theatrical conventions, gender role and sexual fetishes – all with only two characters involved. Thomas (Amalric) is a frustrated director, feeling worn out at the end of a long day of auditioning unsuitable actresses for a role in his first play – which is based on the controversial Venus In Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, first published in 1869. Vanda (Seigner) is a boorish woman who arrives just as he has packed up to go home and demands he host her for a reading. Their interactions and the rapid development of an intense, fractious relationship make up the bulk of the action.

There is plenty of titillation, thanks to both Vanda’s selection of outfits and the subject matter – centred around sex, as much as it is around theatre – the pair discuss. For most of the film, Polanski manages to hold back enough in that regard to give his audience a sense of the delayed gratification his protagonists crave – but at the last he drops the ball and almost ruins the whole project with heavy-handed imagery and symbolism.