Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh Thu 31 Jan only

Roman Polanski / UK / 1966/ 108 min

After successfully adaptating Yazmina Reza’s play God of Carnage into his 2011 hit comedy Carnage, Roman Polanski is currently filming another theatrical adaptation; David Ive’s Venus in Fur. But like his 1966 psychological thriller Cul-de-sac, many of Polanski’s early films were self-penned. After amateurish crook Richard “Dickie” (Lionel Stander) crashes his car in the middle of nowhere he goes in search of a phone. He stumbles upon the isolated home of newly weds Teresa (Françoise Dorléac) and George (Donald Pleasence) and promptly begins to force his agenda onto them.

Outwardly shocking, Polanski layers in moments of surreal, often visual comedy that lighten the film but don’t detract from its atmosphere of menace. The isolation of the setting mirrors the alienation of each character emotionally, the couple living a sham marriage and the struggling gangster. This is a psychological study of how different personalities react and interact when thrown into an alien situation, a theme occuring in a number of Polanski’s canon. By depicting Teresa’s promiscuity early on, Polanski tells us this couple are repressing something and it’s likely the introduction of the provocative outsider (Dickie) will force these characters to confront it. Polanski sets up a plausibly realistic but slightly bizarre scenario forcing his characters to behave outside their normal behaviour patterns, thus creating an interesting and engaging on-screen dynamic.

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