Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Almaric in “Venus in Fur”
“VENUS IN FUR” My rating: B+ (Opens July 18 at the Glenwood Arts)
96 minutes | No MPAA rating
It’s been a bad day for Thomas (Mathieu Almaric). While a raging thunderstorm soaks Paris, the playwright/director has wasted ten hours cooped up in a seedy theater holding auditions. He’s seeking a cast for his new stage adaptation of Venus in Fur, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella about a fellow who gets off on being whipped by a dominant woman. (Thus the word “masochism.”)
Thomas is alone, complaining to a colleague via cell phone about the talentless, self-absorbed actresses — “ten year olds on helium” — who have wasted his time with their wretched posing and preening. After hours of readings he’s no closer to finding someone to play Wanda, the dominatrix heroine of Sacher-Masoch’s tale.
He’s packing up to go home when the doors at the back of the auditorium blow open and a hyperactive blonde in a raincoat enters, motor mouthing breathlessly about how she was delayed and can she still audition. The woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) introduces herself as Wanda — coincidence or omen? — and begs to be heard.
Thomas isn’t encouraged. This Wanda seems to be just one more prattling actress, a drowned cat with a mouthful of chewing gum.
She produces a resume that features a stint with the Urinal Theatre.
“I somehow missed their season,” Thomas observes dryly.
He’s even less impressed when she removes her raincoat to reveal an S&M outfit — the last-ditch ploy of a performer who can’t pull it off by skill alone.
Sensing his reluctance Wanda assures him that “I’m not usually in leather and a dog collar. I’m really demure and shit.”
What she really is is a master manipulator who over the next 90 real-time minutes will take Thomas and the audience on a hell of a ride.
Butler's Cinema Scene 