Polanski's Venus in Fur

I was nervous to see the film version of Venus in Fur this morning. How could they make the movie without Nina Arianda? Why did they reset the action to Paris? (It was hard not to think about Polanski's own Rosemary's Baby recently being inexplicably moved to Paris when remade for NBC.)

Nina WAS Venus in Fur. That performance was a force of nature, and when she switched between "real" Vanda and the character Vanda it was like another actor was onstage. The change was so sudden and so complete that it frightened.

So despite going in with zero expectations I basically loved the film. For every awful decision Polanski made adapting God of Carnage he made a great choice here. The screenplay is remarkably faithful to the stage show, except for the final 10 minutes. The ending improved upon the play IMO though, and definitely suited the medium of film better than how the play ends.

As for the actors- they were both terrific. Mathieu Amalric is older and less attractive than either Wes Bentley or Hugh Dancy, which served to make him even more pathetic as Vanda forced him further into submission.

Emmanuelle Seigner took a little warming up to, but I thankfully didn't find myself sitting there comparing every line reading to Nina's. She did her best work in the final 30 minutes.

In the stage show they switched between American accents and their various European accents when performing Venus in Fur. Now in French, the regular text was in normal subtitles and the lines of the play were in Italics. I couldn't tell any discernible difference in their French accents when they shifted between the two. It certainly lost a bit of an effect from the English version; I wonder if you were a native French speaker and not using subtitles whether or not there would be any difference at all. I liked in the stage show that as the conversation and the play began to fold into one the demarcation of the accents faded too.

This is a very minor quibble though, and overall it was one of my favorite stage to screen adaptations of the past decade.

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SPOILER ANSWER**************

Hi Mike,

To set up the ending: The setting of the film has been altered from an audition/rehearsal space to the actual theater where Venus in Fur will play. They pull a Hedwig/Hurt Locker situation by having the previous show's set (a musical version of Stagecoach!) still be on stage. One of the pieces is a giant cactus which she ties him to, after completely feminizing him with makeup, the dress, heels, etc.

Then she leaves him alone on stage and alters the lighting to a dim haze. She reappears on stage completely naked except for her fur. After discussing The Bacchae earlier in the play she now dances a crazy dance around him as he looks on, terrified. All the snarls and sneers almost verged on camp, but I think Seigner made it work.

The camera pulls out down the center aisle, with the words Thomas used from the Book of Judith on the title page of his play: And the Lord hath smitten him and delivered him into a woman’s hands.

The bacchanal at the end really puts the exclamation point that was missing at the end of the play, which just dimmed the lights after Thomas was tied up and Vanda began to move in on him.

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"It remains one of the most gripping and ingenious new plays we have seen in years."

I saw a regional production and my thought was that it wasn't very much of a play at all. Maybe superlative actors can cover up a multitude of sins? Or I saw a crap-fest production.

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That's often the question with very challenging plays, FindingNamo. Having now seen three Broadway productions of The Real Thing, I am left with the precarious conclusion that it is a great play that is so tough to crack that in less than - forget capable! - optimal hands, can easily seem like a crap-fest.

I hated it even in its celebrated original production, dislike the current revival even more, but the first revival convinced me that it is a wonderful play. Yes, yes, I know.... everyone has their own thoughts on the play and its various incarnations; these are mine. But it seems most agree that The Real Thing readily illustrates my point here: some plays are so tricky that production variables can readily mask their merits.

Updated On: 12/8/14 at 08:36 AM