Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure)

VENUS IN FUR (Roman Polanski, 2013)

It is a dark and stormy night in VENUS IN FUR when Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) arrives at the theater to audition for Thomas (Mathieu Amalric). After a long day of seeing actresses, none of whom have the maturity he thinks the role demands, Thomas is not inclined to let a latecomer who’s not even on the call list take up his time. Nevertheless Vanda insists until he finally agrees to allow her to read for the part. Although he intends to stop her audition after three pages, she demonstrates a grasp of the character that tantalizes him to keep the tryout going.

Like the David Ives play on which the film is based, Thomas has adapted Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s VENUS IN FURS for his production. The term masochism is derived from the Austrian writer and his novel about finding pleasure through degradation. While a clear demarcation exists when Vanda and Thomas are playing the characters and speaking about themselves, the dynamic between them takes on the qualities of the material they’re acting. As the writer and director Thomas is seemingly in charge but finds himself agreeing to being dominated by the unpredictable actress.

The play within the film toys with the questions of if a work reflects an artist’s desires, particularly those that are sublimated, or if everything can simply be ascribed to creative license. Thomas defends dubious ideas and representations in his writing as faithfulness to the source material, but are those qualities what attracted him to it in the first place? Director Roman Polanski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ives, complicates matters further by casting and costuming Thomas with a striking resemblance to himself and having his wife play Vanda. In addition the debate about power dynamics between men and women and the strong and the submissive extends through Polanski’s body of work and colors perceptions of his past legal problems. Thus VENUS IN FUR transforms from a theoretical argument about how much of an artist is in his art to an intimate and self-critical examination. Thomas strives to make the text ambiguous, but in the end veiling his fantasies and frustrations through fiction serves as an acceptable way of hiding them in broad daylight. Interpretation is left to the individual.

VENUS IN FUR opens with a Steadicam shot entering the theater as though Vanda is a succubus barging into Thomas’s snug retreat to torment and delight him. There’s nothing supernatural in how she controls the mood and the lighting, yet her domination of the scenario is handled as though she possesses such abilities to affect mental and physical states according to her will. The film perches on the knife’s edge separating foreboding and the erotic through verbal intercourse. Vanda and Thomas do not touch often, yet it’s unnecessary as VENUS IN FUR conveys a tactile and fetishistic relationship with words and objects.

Seigner has great fun in her versatile performance, appearing first as a brash, gum-smacking dimwit who morphs into a perceptive interpreter capable of being a compliant underling and terrifying challenger. Vanda tells Thomas that as the director it’s his job to torture actors, yet the creative combustion comes as their relationship becomes one rooted in mutable and mutual rule. Either’s submission means nothing without consent.

Grade: B

The Ghost Writer

THE GHOST WRITER (Roman Polanski, 2010)

Playing a character referred to as The Ghost, Ewan MacGregor accepts a lucrative offer to write former British Prime Minister Adam Lang's memoirs in THE GHOST WRITER. Like anything that appears too good to be true, the assignment quickly proves to have its pitfalls. After agreeing to the job The Ghost is mugged and has a manuscript stolen.

The previous ghost drowned in what is considered a suicide or alcohol-fueled accident, but doubts linger about the official line. The ex-politician's assistant refuses to let the last writer's draft leave the island compound. Then news breaks that Lang (Pierce Brosnan) may be brought up on war crimes charges for assisting the CIA with illegal rendition and torture.

Co-writer/director Roman Polanski fashions THE GHOST WRITER as a '70s-styled potboiler bubbling with paranoia and conspiracy. This isn't CHINATOWN level work from Polanski, but THE GHOST WRITER still succeeds as an above-average thriller that dabbles in the political and the personal. A la LAW & ORDER'S ripped from the headlines stories, Tony Blair's actions in office serve as juicy inspiration for a plot trading in accusations of shady government dealings, but rather than delivering substantive political commentary the film is more interested in watching what happens when a group of people close ranks as external pressure ramps up.

Lang and staff, which now includes The Ghost, aren't bound by the island compound's gates, but their mental isolation from a hostile outside world yields compelling responses. Lang continues to come and go as he sees fit while those caught in the crossfire, such as his wife, rivetingly played by Olivia Williams, and The Ghost, hunker down. Both in the foreboding weather and narrative tautness, the encroaching sense of doom pushes the film along with quiet intensity.

THE GHOST WRITER can be read as a metaphor for Polanski's much-publicized life in exile, with the politician standing in for the disgraced director and the writer taking the public's place. Despite The Ghost's best attempts to uncover the truth, he's kept at arm's length from his subject. What he observes is a man who seems relatively untroubled by the storm around him and indignant about his alleged wrongdoing. Those with vested interests are complicit in covering up key points. If this depiction isn't reflective of how the director feels about his situation, then he's done a good job of leading the audience astray in such an interpretation.

A ghost writer's purpose is to tell someone else's story in that person's voice. As co-writer and director Polanski gets to speak for himself through the film, but for all of it's mirroring of real life circumstances, THE GHOST WRITER'S shrouded revelations are ever transitory.

Grade: B+