True/False film review: Venus
Desire, intimacy and shame: Venus conquers the loneliness of feeling wrong and encourages new discussions about female sexuality
Vox Magazine
March 4, 2017
Even as feminism and equality progress, women of all ages still feel strong tension and confusion about sexuality and self-image. Venus is a film that questions the broader, elusive influences on sexual expectations, words and images. The documentary encourages a vital, expansive discussion about desire and intimacy that many women feel that they cannot have.
Danish directors Mette Carla Albrechtsen and Lea Glob began filming with the intent to explore the root of female sexuality directly from the source. They sent out a casting call to ordinary Copenhagen women with the hope to use their real stories for reenactments of what erotic scenes would look like from the female point of view. However, as the filmmakers watched these women unveil themselves both mentally and physically, the directors were overwhelmed by the authenticity and power of their stories. The result is a vulnerable, stripped-down look into the female mind.
The scenes are shot in a single room with a single chair. A white backdrop acts as a pure canvas for the women to paint themselves upon as they share more and more of themselves with the camera. The questions steadily delve more in-depth and the answers get more intense. The film uses extended, silent video-portraits of different women in moments of being, thought or vulnerability. Although it is a foreign language film with English subtitles, the intensity and visible emotion in the women's faces leave little lost in translation. There is an openness and empathy that people are often not used to seeing or hearing about. It is something so powerful and unveiling that the audience is left with the strange inner tingling of new insight and a knowledge that something important just happened.
The experience of the viewer, much like the experience of each woman in Venus, is highly personal and unique to each moviegoer. In a particular scene, one viewer might be engaged and on the verge of tears while the person next to him or her is stifling a giggle. Every woman in the film is distinct from the next. Still, each of the stories resonates in some way as a common experience, from the proud yet self-conscious virgin, to the well-experienced trouble-seeker, to the woman unable to look in the mirror at her own naked body.
Venus is the film that women wish they could have seen while trying to figure out sexuality. It shows a broader understanding of the female mind and realizes that sexuality is not the same for everyone