Venus in Fur

Venus in Fur (2013) takes place in an empty Paris theatre. A director is alone at the end of a day of auditions, having liked nobody. The door opens and a late actress comes in, soaked, dishevelled and apparently with no grasp of the part. The moment she starts reading, everything changes. The film runs on two people and one location. The roles keep exchanging inside the scene: who is directing, who is performing, who is testing whom. The source is David Ives's Broadway play, which itself comes from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel of 1870. The word masochism derives from Sacher-Masoch's name, and the text being read in the film is an adaptation of that novel. Roman Polanski directed and wrote the screenplay with Ives. His wife Emmanuelle Seigner plays the actress and Mathieu Amalric the director. Amalric's marked physical resemblance to the young Polanski was much remarked on. It competed at Cannes in 2013. Polanski won Best Director at the César Awards. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: two handers rooted in theatre, games of power, and Emmanuelle Seigner. Less good for: it is entirely talk on a single set and feels more like watching a stage than a film. It deals in sexual content and humiliation. Taken together with the director's own history, many viewers will find it hard to hold at a distance.