Was this film 3 hours long or fourteen? Kechiche takes us across borders (Africa / Europe, Dead / Living, Savage / Civilized) in a movie that has the gravitas and sensual weight of a kind of stations of the cross. The "Venus" is our Christ, suffering for and as the direct result of our sins, chief among those the blindness we call racism. Potently, even explosively mixed with virulent sexism, racism shapes the ever more horrible experience of the film's subject, as she is reduced (figuratively and then literally) to an object. The film is gorgeous, infinitely wise about the costs of being marked (trapped in the legibly different body), smart about the role that money plays in the ongoing betrayal (if Judas saw this film he'd really feel rooked: the point is not to sell out Christ, the point is how many times you can--for an increasing price--take trust to market), and worth every minute of horrified attention. Then--you ask-- why an "8"? Of course we are (as the film is eager to point out), as spectators, aligned with all those who want to look at this...complicated site of excitements--but we are also (in tight close-up for the tears that always start in Yahima Torres' left eye) vaguely miserable with her (growling at the end of a chain is okay, being touched is--at first--not) and then...nowhere. Who was she? What did she (aside from bright red leather gloves and a tres joli hat) want? There's something about this film, in other words, that seems just about as hard and cold and stiff as the plaster cast of the Hottentot, which seems always just on the verge of coming to life.
Review of Black Venus
