This is the story of the black woman in the early 1800s, shown on cheap varieties as the so called Hottentott Venus. She behaves like an animal, is treated on stage as an animal and is regarded as such by the rude audiences.She isn't a slave. Not technically, but the agreement with her employer is of course on his terms. There are also other forms of performances. This woman also acts in front of Parisian high society and not at least in front of the scientists of the time, who find resemblances with the orangutan.What her employers is exploiting is not just this woman; they also exploit racism and the different kind of audiences let their racism be exploited. There are of course money to be made from prejudices. 200 years ago and now. This our lesson.

While you watch it, this movie will seem too slow, and repetitive. Then you will walk out of the movie theater and start thinking about it: was it too slow to voluntarily short circuit your movie consumer's habits ? was the repetitiousness not unlike some kind of minimalistic serial music? The next day, you will not have completely forgotten the movie, the same way you have completely forgotten the movie you saw the week before. Then, little by little, in the face of the harshness, inhumanity and sheer jungleness of the everyday world, you will think back on Venus noire, on how this movie is a kind of allegory for man's difficulty to care for others. Actually, the repetitiousness of the movie will seem to you not unlike the repetitiousness of man's constant recourse to the "master and slave" scenario to get ahead in life; and the slowness will seem to you not unlike the incredible length of time man is taking to try out some new kinder, less individualistic, more humane scenario which would not only help "the master/s" get ahead. The epilogue images are all about mankind being somehow, sometimes capable of forfeiting its "master and slave" compulsion. Thank you art for reminding us we are capable of that !

The last movie i saw at this years NY Film Fest was Black Venus. As flawed as this movie may have been, at the end of the day it was a step forward in black film (if there even is such a thing). For once i didn't have to sit through a movie about; the first black athlete to slam dunk a basketball at an ivy league school, a single teen mother in the ghetto (yes I'm taking a stab at precious and the hundred other movies to focus on that), an aspiring rapping pimp (hustle n' flow), a black sidekick that has some stupid loyalty to the white main character (a role kept alive by Morgan Freeman and Whoopi Goldberg) or a biography about a predictable civil rights leader. Black Venus Tells the story of Saartjie Baartman (aka "Hottentot Venus"), a young women from Cape Town who was shown as a "freak" in a traveling carnival in Europe during the 1800's, due to her curvy physique (something Europeans had not yet seen). In her short life, not only was she exhibited (and groped at) in a freak show, but she was used as entertainment in private sex parties, studied by scientists like an object and even had to work as prostitute in order to make money. Even though this was Yamiha Torres's first time acting, she gave a performance reminiscent of Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist or even Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet. I make those comparisons, because each of those actresses had to let their guard down, and really stretch as actresses (almost to the point where you kinda feel embarrassed for them at certain points in the movie). Naturally, Black Venus will draw comparison to a movie like; The Elephant Man or even Todd Browning's Freaks (not to say that either Saartjie Baartman or John Merrick were freaks). Black Venus had the natural feel of director; Abdellatif Kechiche's other movies like; Secret of The Grain, which i appreciated. This film only had one flaw but as far as I'm concerned it was a MAJOR one. The editing. Jesus Christ this movie could've been cut down quite a bit. I thought there were WAY too many scenes that focused on her being shown as a freak, and hardly no focus on the main characters back story (outside of a few references here and there). Even more, the scenes where she is paraded around like a sideshow went on for way too long to the point where you want to scream; "ALRIGHT, ENOUGH! WE GET IT!" The last half of the movie in particular has its share of scenes that are very difficult to watch. Black Venus is a lot to take in, and its still stuck in my head. So, even though the movie lacked some serious editing, it obviously succeeded in that the images are still stuck in my head and i cant stop thinking about it. The ending sequence during the credits draws comparison to another David Lynch film; Inland Empire. Both Black Venus and Inland Empire are very intense and take a lot out of you, but both movies have an ending sequence that put you at ease. In Black Venus, the movie ends with actual news footage of Saartjie Baartman's remains being shipped back to South Africa after years of (ironically) being exhibited in a french museum. This one of few scenes in the movie that out you at ease.

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.