VENUS IN FUR

It is hard to believe that director Roman Polanski is actually eighty years of age, and as such, whenever he has a new film out these days, there comes the realization that this quite possibly could be his last.  However, Polanski seems to be a man of boundless energy and even at his current age, it does not look like he will be slowing down his output anytime soon.  “Venus In Fur” is his latest film and is his second consecutive film that has been adapted from a play, has a limited cast and is set entirely in one location (the other film was “Carnage”).  While I would love to see Polanski make one final psychological thriller or horror film before his time is up, along the lines of “Repulsion” or “The Tenant”, at his age this is probably not a realistic expectation.  However, if the conclusion to his filmography is going to be of the quality of his most recent film, “Venus In Fur”, then I would be more than happy to watch him go out making these small intimate films.

“Venus In Fur” is set in Paris, where a woman attempts to audition for the lead role of the stage adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book “Venus In Furs”.  The woman shares the same name as the main character in the book, Vanda, which in her mind makes her perfect for the role however it is going to take a lot more to convince Thomas, the uninterested writer / director of the play.  Vanda finally convinces Thomas to let her read a passage from the play, and she immediately impresses to the point that he asks her to continue reading.  Throughout the next hour and a half, Vanda and Thomas dissect and examine the play, whilst playing out the parts as a strange psychological battle breaks out between the two of them, as each attempts to gain dominance over the other.  Reality and fantasy starts to blur as scenes from the play soon begin being played out in real life, as the roles of our two characters slowly begin to reverse and a battle of power intensifies.  

To be honest, I must admit that I was not really expecting much out of “Venus In Fur”.  I know nothing of the original book nor the play this film is based on, and after watching “Carnage”, seeing Polanski do another stage-bound movie in quick succession kind of disappointed me.  However after viewing the film, I could not have been more wrong.  “Venus In Fur” is a brilliant film that has been expertly made from the master, Polanski.  His direction is just sublime, and it is obvious that he has lost none of his skill in making a movie or telling a story.  Along with the smooth editing, he does a stunning job of telling this story in such a fluid way.  Nothing is showy and it gives the appearance that what you are watching is one long single take.  This couldn’t be further from the truth because there are cuts constantly, but because these are never obvious or in your face, it gives the feeling that what you are witnessing is actually happening then and there and not just part of a movie.

While the film has only two characters and is set in one location, “Venus In Fur” never becomes boring on a visual front, thanks mainly due to Pawel Edelman’s subtle and moody cinematography.  Like everything else in the film, the images are not flashy, but every shot has been framed to perfection and Edelman has lit the stage in such a dark or dim matter that befits the psychological battle of the film to a T.  When you adapt a play for a film, one thing you try to do is hide its stage bound origins and open the film up a bit so it plays more like a film, rather than a filmed play.  Polanski has the harder task of doing just that but with the added complication that the location is the stage itself.  Despite the fact that the location itself is quite open and shouldn’t have a feeling of constriction, Polanski is able to create a tense atmosphere throughout the film that gets increasingly claustrophobic as it goes along.  You are forever uneasy while watching “Venus In Fur” because there is a feeling that something else is going on behind all of that text.

Speaking of the text, the screenplay of “Venus In Fur” is incredibly dense with the whole film being obviously dialogue driven.  The words spoken by our characters obviously have more meaning than their surface appeal, as Vanda starts to question the story and the motivations of its characters, as well as the motivations of the author who adapted the play, Thomas.  She starts asking whether the outdated views of the play make the work sexist, or if it protected under the umbrella of art.  She also starts questioning if the material has a personal connection within Thomas and if this is the reason he chose to adapt it, and if so what does this say about him as both a man or artist?  This is all heady stuff but Polanski delivers it in an entertaining and fun manner (the film is very funny at times), whilst increasing the tension as the story builds.

Roman Polanski is no stranger to psychological battles set in limited locations, with both “Knife In The Water” and “Death And The Maiden” being two prime examples and “Venus In Fur” fits in wonderfully with these films.  As good as “Carnage” was, Polanksi’s influence was limited somewhat while here, “Venus In Fur” feels exactly like a Polanski flick.  You can feel his sensibilities throughout the film, and as well as the aforementioned film, I also felt a little bit of “The Tenant” coming through here.

When it comes to the actors of the film, there are obviously only two, and they are both fantastic.  I have never been a fan of Emmanuelle Seigner as an actress, and have been underwhelmed by her presence in most films I have seen her in, particularly the ones she made with her husband, Roman Polanski.  However she is stunningly good as Vanda which is such a complex role and she nails every nuance perfectly.  I honestly did not think that she had this in her.  Vanda starts off as this ditsy airy fairy girl, but by the end she is so powerful, and domineering and Seigner handles this transition seamlessly.  Mathieu Amalric is just as good as his character’s arc follows the opposite trajectory starting off in the position of power only to end up quite submissive to his actress’s whims.  It also doesn’t escape me just how much Amalric looks like a younger version of Polanski himself, and I am sure he is no doubt an avatar for the director.

Overall, I was thoroughly impressed and entertained by Roman Polanski’s “Venus In Fur”.  It is an intelligent and dense work of art that looks at the battle between the sexes via dominance and submission.  The film works on many levels but I particularly liked the psychological tension that permeates throughout.  Once again, Polanski has expertly crafted tension, suspense and a palpable atmosphere out of a single location and only two principal actors.  “Venus In Fur” also harkens back to some of Polanski’s older work like “Cul-De-Sac”, “Death And The Maiden” and “The Tenant” which can never be a bad thing.  For such a minor film from a giant filmmaker, “Venus In Fur” is still a massive achievement and quality filmmaking in its entirety.

4 Stars.

WITCHING & BITCHING

Sometimes when you hear about a synopsis of a film, you just know it is going to be for you.  “Witching & Bitching” was one of those films for me, because any film that starts with street performers dressed as Jesus and a toy soldier, robbing a pawn store, fleeing from police and then taking refuge in a town run by a coven of witches, well, it’s got to be good, right?  Seriously, the film sounds insane and is yet another reason why I prefer to search out foreign films for quality and original content.  While Hollywood is churning out the same unimaginative stuff, year after year, there are films like this one being made elsewhere around the world.  To be fair, I was always going to see “Witching & Bitching” anyway because it is the latest film from director Alex de la Iglesia; a man who seems to be at his best the more crazy and madcap his films are.

After a brief scene setting the witches up as characters and giving a small indication on where the film is heading, De La Iglesia opens his film with one of his imaginative credit sequences where images of witches and women of history are played over the credited performers and staff.  As usual, these credits just ooze quality and set a tone for the rest of the film (and are very reminiscent of the credits of “The Last Circus” which featured images of famous clowns playing over the credits).  The film then starts in earnest and does so in a glorious fashion with the aforementioned robbery which is both excitingly staged and very funny.  The comedy of the scene is due to a number of things.  First, just witnessing a robbery by a gang of street performers is hilarious in itself.  The gang consists of characters such as Minnie Mouse, Spongebob Squarepants, The Invisible Man, and the Toy Soldier and of course, Jesus who appears to be the boss of the gang.  The guy dressed as Jesus, however, has brought his son along to the robbery because it was his day to have him and because he wants joint custody of the child, he did not want to miss his day with the boy and look like a bad father.  Again, this is another hilarious idea but it gets better as Jesus then gets attacked by his victims in the store for his poor parenting techniques.  While the robbery is a success in the fact that they get the gold they were after, it is also a failure with the police being hot on their tails, which then ends up in a shootout during their escape.  Seeing Spongebob getting annihilated in a hail of bullets is yet another funny moment, but my favourite comedic moment of the opening is a brief gag with the Invisible Man as he tries to make his escape.  I honestly had tears in my eyes, it was so funny.  To make their escape, Jesus (along with his son) and the Toy Soldier take hostage a taxicab, and demand the driver drive them to safety.

From here the film changes into a very funny conversational section as all of the men in the cars start bitching about the women in their lives and in general and how they are the cause of the mess that their lives have turned into.  At this point in time, “Witching & Bitching” is clicking on all cylinders.  The black and satirical comedy is so funny and so un-PC, as the five guys all take turns at potting their girlfriends or exes, and from a visual standpoint, de la Iglesia is having a ball.  After the relative calm nature of his previous film “As Luck Would Have It”, it is so good to see de la Iglesia returning to his mad, anything goes style.  Both he and Jorge Guerricaechevarría have come up with a stunning script here, that is very fast paced and wordy.  There were times in the film when the dialogue was moving so fast that it reminded me a little of the screwball comedies from the 30’s and 40’s.  After two films apart, it is so great to have Jorge Guerricaechevarría back where he belongs and working alongside Alex de la Iglesia.  They are a terrific team that when together obviously have boundless imagination, but as well as all of the crazy stuff, they also have the ability to create interesting characters in their films.  During the taxi ride to freedom, we start to learn just who our main characters are and their ultimate motivations for robbing the pawn store.  Jose (who was dressed as Jesus) is the divorced father of Sergio who after paying all the child support he has to, his child’s school fee’s and the like, has little for himself to survive on, so a robbery seemed the only way out for him.  Likewise, Antonio (the toy soldier) feels emasculated by his girlfriend with the two of them appearing to have reversed gender roles in their relationship, to the point that he is terrified to tell her that he lost his job as a bouncer at a strip club after it closed down.  Being as he is unemployed, he also has no money and the robbery was sure to fix that.  Through all this conversation, it isn’t long before Sergio mentions he left his back-pack back at the store, which is full of all his school books that are named, addressed and have a phone number in case they get lost.  So not only are the cops on their tails, they know who was behind the robbery, but worse than that, Sergio’s mother / Jose’s ex is also tracking them down.

During the first two thirds of “Witching & Bitching”, the film is absolutely top-notch entertainment and is the best thing de la Iglesia has done since “The Ferpect Crime”.  The film is brilliantly paced and edited and moves at a cracking pace, but it is the difficult tone that is a mixture of comedy, action and horror that is so impressive and what should have been difficult to pull off.  De la Iglesia has always been a master at conveying this kind of tone and being able to find the comedy in such horrific moments, and he does so here once again.  Visually, the film is also stunning to look at, with de la Iglesia’s regular cinematographer, Kiko De La Rica, providing his usual magic.  The introduction of the witches is also handled very well as is when our group of guys visits their residence for the first time.  Everything is going so well, that I am expecting to have a new favourite Alex de la Iglesia film…..BUT….

Sadly it all falls apart in the final third of the film.  In fact, it is worse than that, this section of the film is absolutely deplorable and destroys all the good that has come before it.  Without going into too much detail, the film ends on a much bigger and epic scale than the rest of the film, and fails miserably.  Suddenly the film is filled with an overabundance of badly rendered CGI and it feels as though De La Iglesia loses control of his own film.  It is hard to even recognize that this final third was made by the same person who made the genius that came before it.  This is the frustration that can come with De La Iglesia sometimes where he can create some absolutely sensational stuff only to undo it all later in the same film.  The same thing happened with “The Last Circus” (though not as drastically as it happened here) when he created a bizarre and entertaining film only to try and end it on a bigger note than was needed, and thus taking the shine off of what came before.  What I am about to say is going to be a little contradictory but I think that Alex de la Iglesia is at his best when the madness he creates is a controlled madness.  While there is no doubt it is the insanity of his films that makes them so popular, I feel that he sometimes loses focus and tries to cram in too much, ultimately affecting the quality of the film.  His greatest films are those that yes, are still insane, but are much more controlled and I am talking particularly about “Common Wealth” and “The Ferpect Crime”.  With the finale of “Witching & Bitching” even his visual style and technique seems to get thrown out the window, with the battle between two witches being particularly poorly staged.  It is also in this section that the pacing of the film and the sharp editing also falls apart and the biggest problems with the script occur, particularly with the sudden change of character from one of the witches.

When it comes to the acting in the film, the majority of it is pretty good.  Hugo Silva is fantastic and very charismatic as Jose, the man with questionable parenting techniques, as is Mario Casas as Antonio, but my favourite performance belonged to Carmen Maura who plays the head witch Graciana.  She is so good and is clearly having a great time playing this less than serious role.  I also enjoyed Carlos Areces in the brief role of Conchi.  However, the performance that came across as just wrong or odd was that of Carolina Bang, who plays the young biker witch Eva.  While she is no doubt a beautiful woman, she comes across as very creepy here, but less scary and more demented, and she seems totally miscast here.  She just didn’t fit into the world that was created here.

Overall, “Witching & Bitching” (great title, by the way) is one of the most frustrating films I have seen in a long time.  The opening two thirds of this film were so good and well put together, I thought we had a new cult classic on our hands.  Sadly once the abomination of the final third is over, that feeling is all but vanished as is the memory of what good that came before it.  This is seriously the worst ending I have seen in a film (that was so great) for a long time, to the point that I think it will be a while before I watch this film again.  If you get a chance to see “Witching & Bitching”, my advice is to get up and leave once you see the guys tied up at the witch’s dinner table, because it is all downhill from there.  “Witching & Bitching” was headed for a 4 star rating minimum, but ultimately the disappointment of the finale has dropped my score to….

3 Stars.

JUHA

Aki Kaurismaki’s 1999 film “Juha” has the unique distinction of being the century’s final silent film made; a century which saw the art-form reach its zenith before sadly being snuffed out by “talking” features well before its time.  Since their demise in the early 1930’s, very few silent films have been made at all, making the style of film all but a dead form but Aki Kaurismaki has revived it perfectly with “Juha”; a film that suffers no comparison with the classics of that era.

“Juha” is a simple tale of a happy couple living and working off the country.  The married couple are Juha and Marja, simple folk who lead simple lives working on their cabbage farm.  To most outsiders, their lives could be considered dull or boring, but this is all the couple know and importantly they are very happy.  One day a stranger enters town when his automobile breaks down near Juha’s property.  Juha helps the stranger out (whose name is Shemeikka) but explains it will take him a day to get the required parts, and he offers Shemeikka a room to stay for the night.  Shemeikka’s eye is immediately captured by Juha’s wife, Marja, and the stranger sets about seducing her and trying to convince her to leave Juha.  Amazingly, Marja is intrigued by the stranger’s city style and his perceived fast and exciting way of life.  She suddenly finds her own life to be dull and looks to have more fun and Marja ends up leaving with Shemeikka (after Juha has passed out from a night of drinking), smitten by the handsome stranger.  However as soon as she leaves her old life for something new, she comes to realise that she has made a terrible mistake, as Shemeikka is not at all the man he appeared to be.  In fact he ends up enslaving the poor Marja in the brothel he runs, where she is expected to “work” to earn her keep.  All Marja can do is wait and hope the man she betrayed will come look for her and save her from this living hell.

This is such an easy film to watch and enjoy even though the themes within it are quite dark.  The film is basically a three-hander but surprisingly for a film titled “Juha”, he is the character that is featured the least.  It is really Marja’s story that we follow through until the end, with Juha only being present at the beginning and towards the end.  As I mentioned above, Kaurismaki has done a fabulous job of capturing the spirit of silent films without ever totally aping the style.  Thankfully this is not a nostalgia piece in the fact that Kaurismaki has not just made a pastiche of silent films past, rather this is just like any other film, with the exception that it is told in this old style.  Apparently, Kaurismaki chose to film “Juha” silently because the only actor he could see in the part of Sheeikka, Andre Wilms, spoke no Finnish at all.  Even though this is unlike anything Kaurismaki had done before or since and was in a completely different style, the signature of its author is prevalent throughout.  There is no mistaking who made this film.  Kaurismaki’s very deliberate and precise visual style is on show here, as is his economic direction, not to mention his famous deadpan humour, although this is less pronounced here due to the dark themes.

All of the performances within the film are very stylised but if you are familiar with Aki Kaurismaki’s previous work, this shouldn’t come as a shock to you.  There is a sense of artificiality within the performances as directed by Kaurismaki but amazingly through said performances is the actors ability to reproduce honest human emotions.  With “Juha” though, this acting style has been inflated even more to accommodate the lack of dialogue and if there was one thing I was critical of, in regards to the performances, is that I think at times, the pantomime is sometimes a little too broad.  Filling out the three main roles in “Juha” are all long time and repeated Kaurismaki regulars with Sakari Kuosmanen playing the titular Juha, the always fantastic Kati Outinen playing his suffering wife, Marja, and the aforementioned Andre Wilms being the villain of the film.  Wilms is absolutely vile in the film and I was surprised at just how convincing he was at being evil.  With his sinister grin and uncaring cackle, Shemeikka is a long way from the kind and caring Marcel Marx, the character he played in Kaurismaki’s latest “Le Havre”.  This is the first time I had seen Kuosmanen, and he does a fabulous job of portraying the big hearted, cripple Juha, and expertly convinces the heartache and emptiness he feels (and the betrayal) after the love of his life leaves him for another man.  It is actually a heartbreaking performance.  While it is easy to be critical of Marja’s decisions early on in the film, through Outinen’s performance we do feel empathetic towards her and the situation she ultimately finds herself in.  It is always a sad event to witness naivety and innocence ultimately being perverted.

While the film is no doubt a silent film, there are moments in the film where Kaurismaki allows sound to enter the film (but never dialogue).  Sounds such as doors closing, or wind blowing are added out of the blue, and while I am not sure about the reason for their inclusions, it never feels out of place or odd.  There is one entire sequence that features sound which is when Juha decides to find his wife and bring her home.  It is during his preparations that we hear sounds of his shaving and the like, and it gives the scene a sense of importance and makes it stand out from the rest of the film, even though Juha is doing mundane tasks; it is the fact that he has finally decided to act that is the big thing.  Silent films, more than most films, rely a lot on their music score and the score for “Juha” by Anssi Tikanmaki is just sublime.  I am hopeless at talking about music because it is not my strong point, but the score has a timeless feel to it while at the same time feeling very modern and of the place the film is set.  It is just perfect and complements the images Kaurismaki has created.  Tikanmaki also has a very brief acting role within the film.

I must admit that after all the praise and accolades “The Artist” received just a few years back, I am a little stunned that Kaurismaki’s silent effort is barely known at all.  It is just as good at bringing the old art-form back to life, particularly with its stunning black and white images.  While it is not the first time Kaurismaki has worked with black and white, one of his great strengths within his visual style is with his bold and distinct use of colour and it is great to see that even without this strength at his disposal, he is able (along with the help of his director of photography, TimoSalminnen) to create stunning and interesting images to tell his story; obvious the most important aspect of a silent film.

Overall, I really enjoyed “Juha” but was surprised by how dark it went after its very happy opening.  Kaurismaki’s regular actors all put in great performances to create an entertaining and dramatic three-hander.  This is a sad tale of love, loss and revenge that is well worth seeking out if you get the chance, and is further evidence of just how great a range Aki Kaurismaki has as director.  He is a unique cinematic talent.

3.5 Stars.