Movie Box Review

VENUS IN FUR exists, at this point in its Broadway life, as two overlapping but not identical entities:  it's a deft new play by David Ives, but also, and more prominently, it's become the Star-Is-Born vehicle for its lead actress, Nina Arianda, who's currently giving about as dazzling a performance as you're likely to see on a Broadway stage.  

No one had ever heard of Arianda before she starred in the initial 2010 Off-Broadway production of Venus, and fittingly, in the play she's introduced as an unknown aspiring actress.  Her name is Vanda, and at the end of a long day, hopelessly late, she blows into an audition hall like a scatterbrained force of nature, desperate to try out for the lead in the play Venus In Fur--a character coincidentally also named Vanda.  The only one still in the audition room is writer/directorThomas (Hugh Dancy), who's packing up to leave, but Vanda talks herself, in her seemingly bubble-headed, flaky-funny way, into being allowed to read.  Once she begins, everything changes.

Thomas' play is based on the real late 19th century novel of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.  His name became the root of the term "masochism," and that pretty much tells you the subject matter of the work.  It concerns a man named Severin and his obsession with Vanda, before whom he finds sexual satisfaction in abasement and humiliation.  Thomas claims to have written the adaptation out of purely academic fascination, with no personal feelings attached, but when Vanda convinces him to take the role of Severin opposite her, it's no surprise that before long, his real emotions begin to show.

The role of Vanda (the actress) is spectacularly mercurial, presented initially as a sort of savant who doesn't have a thought in her mind when she's being herself, but instantly takes on--embodies--all the necessary characteristics (accent, bearing) as well as the complexities and nuances of Vanda (the character) as soon as she's reading the role.  And there are increasing hints that she may not just be a gifted actress...

Venus In Fur (the play) is ultimately more of a game (and a satire on actor/director politics) than a serious commentary on male/female relationships, as Vanda the actress and Vanda the character constantly shift and begin to merge, and the balance of power between her and Thomas/Severin inevitably comes to resemble the story they're enacting.  But what a game!  The role of Vanda is a gift to a performer in the way that split-personality roles like Sybil and The 3 Faces of Eve have been gifts to actresses in the past:  Arianda gets to become less and more intelligent, submissive and powerful, American and European, seductive and revolted, 21st Century and 19th, all with split-second hairpin turns of body language and voice.  It's the very definition of a tour de force, and she pulls it off gloriously.

Dancy's work is less overwhelming than Arianda's, but shouldn't be underestimated.  He also has to transition between eras, characters-within-characters, and contrasting positions of power, and does so with seeming ease  Ultimately, though, his character's throughline is more clearly preordained, and Thomas is destined to be Vanda's foil.  

Walter Bobbie's direction brings a welcome clarity to what could have been a mess of confusion:  even when we don't know exactly what's going on, or who a character 'is," we always feel comfortable that we know as much as the play wants us to at that given moment, and where we are in Ives' process.  John Lee Beatty's set design and Peter Kaczorowki's lighting design are also notable for squeezing a remarkable variety of changes out of a single fixed set.

Venus In Fur is constantly enjoyable, even if not particularly profound, a satisfying, sexy, funny exercise in theatrical gamesmanship (gameswomanship?).  It's destined to remembered, though, mostly for unleashing Nina Arianda and her powerhouse set of skills onto an audience that finds itself more than willing to yield.

Although Fox Searchlight didn't actually acquire Steve McQueen's film Shame until last Saturday, in a sense the marketing campaign for the film began when the producers made it clear that the film would not be edited for US release, and would be distributed with an NC-17 rating. This quickly became the most memorable fact about the film, and will lead to some disappointed audiences when it opens in December. Not because there's a lack of sex in Shame--there's plenty, although none of it is remotely hardcore--but because the film isn't at al interested in eroticism. Instead, it's a deadly serious account of a man drowning in his need for emotionless sex.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is an executive at a blank-faced NY firm, and he's good at his job, but really all he cares about are those moments when he can lose himself in sex. Specifically, in anonymous sex, with hookers or one-night-stands. (When he can't actually have sex, he watches pornography.) He's not a man who has relationships and then cheats; he wants no part--and indeed cannot function--in any relationship that requires feeling for the other party. He's not a rapist or a serial killer--it's all completely consensual--but in the sheer inhumanity and compulsion of his act, and his mix of lust and self-disgust, he seems similarly disturbed

Apart from his obsession, Brandon keeps every other part of his life under strict control--if anything, he's obsessively tidy. His sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) is the reverse, a mess in every sense of the word. Sissy, a jazz singer, makes clutter wherever she goes: she's clingy where Brandon is aloof; she longs for emotional connection while he repels it. When she shows up in NY and insists on staying in his apartment, he can't stand it. (There's a suggestion of something unsavory in their shared past.)

The film comes to center on their relationship, or lack thereof, and McQueen is unsparing. He gets extraordinary performances from his two stars. McQueen and Fassbinder had worked together on McQueen's first film as a director, Hunger, and in a very different way, Fassbinder's work is just as remarkable here. Brandon the Sex Addict could easily have been a joke, but Fassbinder's combination of fury, charm and repressed revulsion is riveting. We've never seen Mulligan give a performance like this before--she's a roiling mix of emotions, teetering over an abyss. (She's so good she even survives McQueen putting her through a dirge-like performance of "New York, New York" that seems to go on longer than the original movie.)

McQueen began as a visual artist, and his compositions (photography by Sean Bobbitt) are remarkable. They're often played out at great length, as McQueen favors having the script he wrote with Abi Morgan (writer of TV's terrific The Hour), and then extemporized upon by the actors, performed in lengthy shots, with little editing. His use of music is also impeccable, and often makes use, Kubrick-like, of preexisting music.

Shame will be taken by many as a slow, cold, bleak walk on the wild side, and that NC-17 won't work for long at the boxoffice. For some, though, it will be one of the year's major films, and exciting proof that the director and his stars are among the most revelatory talents in film today.

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