Another year and 4 more movie reviews for
the e-zine “Predominant’. In 2012, I reviewed the very short film “Love Me Like
You Hate Me” (2010), the Italian film “Masoch” (1980), Massimo Dallamano’s rendition of “Venus in Furs” (1969), and finally
the Joe Marzano/Lou Campa 1967 sexploitation version of “Venus in Furs”. I have
now reviewed four different films with the name “Venus in Furs”, and none of
them have anything in common other than using the title from the famous Sacher-Masoch
novel.
I must say that I really enjoyed the Massimo
Dallamano’s rendition of “Venus in Furs” (1969) but I must warn you, it is very
hard to find a copy that will play on a United States DVD player. The movie was
originally released with the title “Le malizie di Venere” (The slyness of
Venus). Later when the film was dubbed in English, it was re-titled “Devil in
the Flesh”. And when the English rights to the film was obtained by ‘Shameless
Entertainment’ and they released it on DVD, they simply cut to the chase and
renamed it “Venus in Furs”. Confused yet?
Oh, and did I mention that there are two
films released in 1969 with the title “Venus in Furs”, this one and the Jess
Franco movie “Venus in Furs”, which had nothing to do with Sacher-Masoch’s
book, other than the title. In the September/October 2010 issue of Predominant,
I reviewed the 1969 Jess Franco movie “Venus in Furs”. Once I got past my
initial disappointment of the misleading name and reviewed the film purely on
its own merit, I realized that Jess Franco had made a superb movie. It had
D&S elements, it had Franco’s trademark “surrealism” and thanks to the jazz
music the movie also had an excellent soundtrack. I gave the movie 4 out of 5
stars.
Back to Massimo Dallamano’s rendition of
“Venus in Furs”, not only are there four different films called “Venus in Furs”
but there are three different films called “Devil in the Flesh” and the 1969
Massimo Dallamano film goes by both names. And don’t get me started on the different region codes and cross
platforms of DVD’s. For those not familiar with region codes, the United States
is region 1 and Europe region 2 and other parts of the world have other region
codes. You can’t watch a region 2 DVD on a region 1 DVD player and vice versa.
So I ended up ordering the ‘Shameless Entertainment’ English DVD of the 1969
Massimo Dallamano’s film “Devil in the Flesh” which is also called “Venus in
Furs”. I got it off of Amazon but I had to order the United Kingdom region 0
DVD because there isn’t one available in region 1. As it turned out, I couldn’t
watch a region 0 DVD on my DVD player. However, I tried it on my computer DVD
drive and ‘Walla!’ it played thus I was able to review the film.
I was pleasantly surprised when I watched
Massimo Dallamano’s rendition of Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs.” It’s a
surprisingly faithful adaptation of the novel. Dallamano moves the
Sacher-Masoch story to the present day (which in this case is 1969 when the
movie was made). The end of the 1960’s proves to be an ideal setting for
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s sexuality what with the female liberation movement
combined with a swinging, free-love culture.
Those familiar with the novel know that the
lead character Severin (much like the author) likes to be dominated, whipped
and humiliated by women. Wanda is a hesitant participant at first but she ends
up going beyond what Severin desired. They embark on a romance and after they have sex for the first
time, Wanda shows Severin her scrap book which has pictures of her when she was
a strip-tease dancer. In one of the pictures she is holding a whip. Severin
asks her if she would recreate her dance routine for him. Wanda fetches the
whip and she performs the erotic dance, flinging the whip around. Wanda accidentally
strikes Severin across his face with the whip, she apologizes profusely but
Severin smiles and he becomes even more passionate. He kisses her and then he
rolls over on the bed with his naked back exposed. Severin takes the
opportunity to tell Wanda about his sexual proclivities.
“Do it again. Come on whip me.”
Wanda complies and
begins to whip his back. All the while we hear more of his inner thoughts.
“My flesh burns but the
pain gives me such infinite pleasure.”
Throughout the movie we
hear Severin’s innermost thoughts and between this and his many conversations
with Wanda we learn about the depths of Severin’s submissive desires. He wants
to be owned by a woman. He wants to worship a woman. And he wants to be utterly
dominated and humiliated by a woman.
“In love there are only
masters and slaves. Those who dominate and those who are dominated.”
Wanda is intrigued by Severin’s submission and their romance
continues, as does the game of cat and mouse. The romance continues (yes the movie proceeds at a very slow pace
but I didn’t have a problem with it because I felt it was important for the
story development). The couple goes horseback riding. They bring the horses
back to the stable and the owner of the stable invites them to watch the
breeding of two of his finest horses. We see two horses snuggling next to each
other, obviously flirting as if they are about to mate. The owner of the horses
explains to Wanda how the male horse is only there to get the female horse
aroused. He plans to breed her with a different horse, a stud horse.
Once the mare is ready,
the owner removes the colt and he brings in the stallion who mounts the mare
and begins to fuck her from behind doggy style (or is it horsey style,
whichever it is I felt they showed the stud horse humping the female horse way
too long for my taste. It bordered on animal porn there for a minute but if
you’ve ever watched two horses in action, at least you come to understand the
phrase ‘he’s hung like a horse’). Wanda seems fascinated by all of this as if
she now understands the role of Severin in her life. He is the colt and she is
the mare. He is there merely to play with, to arouse her, but only studs will
get to fuck her.
The couple comes across
a stream where a young man of twenty is fishing. Taking a page out of what they
had witnessed with the horses, Wanda sits on a rock and Severin caresses her
legs in order to arouse her. The young man fishing can’t help but notice the
beautiful Wanda. She asks Severin one final time if this is what he really
wants then she seduces the young man. She takes him off into the woods and has
sex with him while Severin watches from a safe distance. After the young man
leaves her, Severin snuggles next to her on the ground. The sexually fulfilled
Wanda tells Severin that she feels all the more in love with him now that she
knows he will give her such freedom. Severin proposes marriage to her and Wanda
accepts.
Wanda: “I want to
betray you. I want to bring you to desperation.”
Severin: “Be cruel to
me, as nature is cruel, destroying that which it has created.”
They get married and as
a wedding present Severin gives Wanda a fur coat. Wanda puts it on, basking in
the pleasure of feeling the fur against her naked skin. She asks Severin why
furs are so fascinating. He explains that “furs represent both power and
femininity and it exalts a woman’s animal instincts and increases her desire.”
Wanda is thrilled being
married to Severin. She truly loves him and in the early days (weeks, months)
of the marriage, she acts like any new bride, beaming with happiness. She can
hardly keep her hands off of him and she looks at him with eyes of adoration.
Severin buys Wanda a
mansion complete with a statue of Venus and an oriental gong that she can sound
to summon him. Wanda hires two maids, two lesbians who are lovers. Severin
encourages Wanda to beat him but he desires more than just physical cruelty
from her; he wants to be humiliated as well. He will play the role of Wanda’s
servant and chauffeur, Gregor, driving Wanda to various engagements including
her trysts with other men.
Wanda is enticed by
Severin’s masochism but she is not entirely happy with the arrangement. She is
conflicted. It’s not that she objects to having sex with other men but she’s
not entirely comfortable with Severin’s strange mix of physical passivity and
emotional manipulation. Severin shows signs of being controlling and he becomes
jealous whenever Wanda refuses to share with him where she goes or who she sees
socially. While Severin wishes to be the submissive partner physically and
sexually, he also wants to remain in psychological control of the games he and
Wanda are playing.
Wanda commissions a painter to create a portrait
of her; naked, holding her whip.
When
the painting is finished, with Severin being there to witness the unveiling,
Wanda removes her robe and jumps into the arms of the painter. Wanda takes him
by the hand and leads him to her bedroom. She assures the nervous painter that
her husband is perfectly fine with this arrangement. Severin watches through
the bedroom screen as the painter makes love to his wife.
“Seeing her with another
man makes me suffer. I feel a terrible pain pounding in my temple. And yet she
looks so beautiful… I have never suffered so much.”
When he is done making
love to her, the painter leaves as Severin enters the bedroom. He removes his
shirt and kneels to caress Wanda’s body. But Wanda snaps at him, “Don’t you
touch me.”
This is the first time
Wanda has cheated on Severin as his wife and she begins to cry. He tries to comfort her but she slaps him hard across his face
and yells at him to “get out”. Severin asks “what’s wrong?” Wanda
grabs her whip and in a fury, she brutally whips Severin, cutting his face
several times and leaving marks all over his body.
“I hate you! Get out! You disgust me! Get out! Get out!”
The next day, all seems
forgiven and Severin is Wanda’s chauffer again. The dominant/submissive
elements of the marriage are becoming far more complicated than they appear to
be on the surface, and there is in fact a power struggle being conducted by
Wanda and Severin. Wanda begins to treat Severin more cruelly.
When she picks up a
macho biker as her latest sex toy, he too is drawn into her D&S games. She
makes Severin exit the vehicle so she can have sex with the biker in the back
seat of the car. As if that isn’t emasculating enough, she orders Severin to
walk far enough away from the car so he can’t watch her having sex with the
biker (in doing this she is now taking away that which Severin enjoys the most
about their cuckolding arrangement). When Severin hesitates to leave, the biker
runs him off, thinking Severin is but Wanda’s chauffer, not knowing he is in
reality her husband. The biker becomes Wanda’s stallion and she encourages her
new stud to treat her emasculated husband as cruelly as she does.
Later on we see Wanda
and the biker back at her house, having sex in her bedroom. Severin takes up
his usual position behind the screen so he can watch. The biker notices Severin
and he jumps off the bed and grabs him. He orders Severin to leave but Severin
tells him that he has every right to be there. When the biker asks Wanda what
Severin is talking about, she nonchalantly lights a cigarette and says,
“May I present my
husband. That’s how he gets his pleasure. He’s a degenerate.”
Severin is no longer
happy with this arrangement and he begins to question his submissive desires.
“Love does not unite a
man and a woman, it separates them, turning them into implacable enemies. There
is no truce in the war between the sexes. Only winners and losers. Only masters
and slaves.”
The next day Wanda is
having lunch with her lover. When she asks her husband where he’s been, he confesses to
her about his unhappy status. She tells him that he cannot move her with his
emotions and she verbally dresses him down in front of her lover, calling him
an idiot and telling him he is powerless and not a real man. Severin lashes out
by calling her a Bitch. Wanda slaps him across the face, which would normally
send Severin off into subspace but not this time. Instead, he goes to his room
and packs.
He has decided to leave
Wanda and begin a new life. He comes to a tourist
stop that is full of prostitutes. One of the prostitutes reminds him of Wanda
(the prostitute is also played by Laura Antonelli). He picks her up and they go
to a hotel room. As his mind recalls all the times and all the ways Wanda
mistreated him, he takes his anger out on the prostitute, slapping her around.
The hotel manager and a security guard hear the abuse taking place and they
bust into the room and subdue Severin. The guard is about to arrest him when
the prostitute begs them not to do it. She claims it was all her fault and to
please leave Severin alone. The men relent and leave the room.
It turns out that the
prostitute is accustomed to being treated cruelly by men and she wants to stay
with Severin. She calls him Master and promises she will do whatever he wants
her to do.
Severin seems excited
about this and he whispers in her ear what he wants her to do. She looks
intrigued and she eagerly agrees to his request. And what does Severin want her
to do? He wants her to whip him. The movie ends with the prostitute whipping
Severin. She is laughing happily as she flogs him and Severin has a peaceful
look on his face as he gladly endures her whip.
Régis Vallée is quite
good in the role of Severin, avoiding the temptation to play him as a
milquetoast submissive man. And the stunningly beautiful Laura Antonelli is
equally good as Wanda, a dominant woman by nature but one who is not sure she
really wants to fulfill that role.
This rendition of “Venus
in Furs” has an abundance of visual style, with plenty of classic late
60s/early 70s sets. Both Régis Vallée and Laura Antonelli are beautiful people
that are just as easy to look at clothed or unclothed (and Laura Antonelli is
unclothed for a considerable proportion of the movie’s running time).
The
movie is your typical foreign film from this era in that it can be drawn out at
times with gaps in dialogue and a less than flattering musical score. And don’t
expect the whipping scenes to be on par with what you see today on Femdom
websites. They never show Wanda actually whipping Severin. We see her using the
whip and then we see Severin with cuts on his face and body but we never
actually see whip making contact with flesh. And the sex scenes are more R
rated than X rated but if you like seeing a beautiful woman topless and men
kissing and touching her naked skin, you’ll no doubt find the film to be plenty
enough erotic.
I found the dialogue
between Severin and Wanda to be rather profound as it related to the power
dynamics and the internal struggles of those power dynamics within their
relationship. Overall this movie is a wonderful portrayal of the Sacher-Masoch
novel and bringing it into more modern times really worked for me.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
I’ve yet to sign on for another year for “Predominant”
and as of today I am leaning toward 2012 being my last. But I have yet to make
a final decision because I do enjoy searching for these kinds of movies,
watching them and writing my opinion of them.
