La Venus A La Fourrure (aka Venus In Fur) (2013)

A theater director (Mathieu Amalric, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) is frustrated that he can't find the right actress for his new play, an adaptation of von Sacher-Masoch's 1870 S&M novel VENUS IN FUR. In walks in a rag doll of a ditzy actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) late for her audition and it's not long before the cat and mouse game begins and the tables turn. As he proved with DEATH AND THE MAIDEN and CARNAGE, Roman Polanski knows how to do filmed theater the right way! Based on the 2010 David Ives play, Polanski takes the thin material (the writing isn't very good, not having seen the play I can only assume it was a bore) and injects a mischievous playfulness to the proceedings. One can't take the play's underdeveloped ideas too seriously (and I don't think Polanski did either) but as a sly battle of the sexes, there's much fun to be had. Amalric looks so much like a younger Polanski that sometimes one forgets that it isn't Polanski! Seigner is marvelous here, teasing the audience as much as she's teasing Amalric and seducing both him and us all the while. The nicely subtle score is by Alexandre Desplat.