Your Venus seems as well-thumbed as your book.

Venus In Fur
Roman Polanski 2013 France
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner

Chances are if you ask your average person what they know about the director Roman Polanski their immediate reaction will involve the alleged criminal events of 1977, their notoriety having clouded his career and blinded many to his fine body of work. His latest film, Venus In Fur, addresses this incident as well as a plethora of other controversies and criticisms. Ostensibly it's adapted from a play by David Ives, which in itself made avid use of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus In Furs (the origin of the word 'masochism'), but, hold no doubts, this is a Polanski production - a play within a play (based on a novel) within a (screen)play if you like. When his main character Thomas Novacheck speaks of his intention to direct his subject "to within an inch of its life" he's not kidding. At one point Novacheck harangues his opposite number, Vanda, for seeing child abuse in everything and at another he improvises a scene spoken to his "oldest enemy" for which she puts on a German accent. Later she dons a dress similar to that of Nastassja Kinski in Tess, hands him a blue/green smoking jacket that resembles the one worn in The Fearless Vampire Killers, smears him with lipstick like Donald Pleasance in Cul-de-Sac, drags him up as Polanski did to himself in 1976's The Tenant, holds a kitchen knife straight out of Rosemary's Baby to his throat. As played by the outstanding Mathieu Amalric (a dead ringer for the younger Polanski) Thomas is a cantankerous and self important writer/director who derides several theatrical staples whilst gleefully ignoring the fact that his work is too short, wildly misogynistic and, in truth, not even fully realised. Alone in a broken-down theatre after a fruitless series of auditions he's confronted with Vanda, an apparently brainless actress running late in the midst of the worst day of her life and desperate for a shot at stardom, and, through a mixture of sympathy and having the same name as his main female character, she fights her way into a try-out. Pretty soon however it becomes clear that she knows the script inside out (despite him only having released a small amount of it) as well as a lot of information about his life and the roles switch, her directing and him an almost willingly helpless participant. Novacheck is Polanski taking an aggressive paddle through his subconscious, possibly in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of the world (not to mention his own), inviting us to comment and engage with the arguments. But if he's easy to read Vanda is far trickier. The elephant in the room is the casting of Emmanuelle Seigner, a talented actress and Polanski's wife of 25 years. Much has been made of her playing the Whore of Babylon in their previous collaboration, the implication being that this is a revenge of sorts on her part, her destroying a screen substitute for his faults for all to see. In a strange way though she reminds me more of a sweary Mary Poppins, arriving with an umbrella, a bottomless bag of props and apparent magical ability seemingly to be employed by but actually to civilise an unkind and authoritarian man of power. Although she could be an all-knowing goddess, a living Bacchae come to humiliate a despotic figure for daring to doubt her power. An angel or a demon is also a possibility; her entrance is accompanied by thunder and lightning and her mention of an unseen but well-informed "agent" flashes with double meanings. The ambiguity (a word that keeps cropping up in the script) of her intentions may well even be intentional, Polanski's way of acknowledging that his view of a woman (and, by extension, his wife) as a 'goddess' isn't the ultimate compliment that some may mistake it for. Perhaps she is Polanski himself (or at least his inner self) - his doubts, his fears, his self-loathing and regret, his raging conscience - and the film is even more metaphysical than it first seems, Polanski directing Polanski confronting Polanski about Polanski. If this is the case though the film's excellence is tinged with a slightly disappointing undercurrent as, even though he is the one under scrutiny, prostrating his very being before Vanda and us, he is also the main subject, the hero and the villain, the avenger and the one in need of reform, the human and the deity. In itself it's an accomplished, intelligent, funny (Thomas' dramatic reading of the line "Annihilate me" from his play being interrupted by Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in ringtone form stands out) and mature piece although his claim to be addressing his own sexism is almost undermined by Vanda's victory dance (complete with glorious facial expressions from Seigner) having been shot with a distinctly male gaze.