BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
June 15, 2014
A Dominatrix Who Hates Heels
Emmanuelle Seigner Finds a Mature Role in ‘Venus in Fur’
Source: Nytimes.com. - The New York Times - USA
USA - NEW YORK - Emmanuelle Seigner
, hates high heels and avoids wearing them at all costs. When the designer Tom Ford asked her to walk in a fashion show, she successfully pleaded with him to put her in flats. But there was no avoiding them in her latest film, Venus in Fur
,” directed by her husband, Roman Polanski, in which she plays a dominatrix of sorts whose sartorial centerpiece is a pair of thigh-high kinky boots.
So Ms. Seigner found a compromise. She had hiking boots made that elevated her to the same height, and wore them for close-ups or shots from the waist up.
“I can’t do them, no, I walk like a handicapped woman,” Ms. Seigner said of the heels in her French-inflected English, during an interview at the SoHo Grand Hotel during the
Tribeca Film Festival, in April. (She was wearing high-tops.) “I think the most difficult thing about the role was to wear those high heels.”
Torturous shoes aside, Ms. Seigner said that the film, which will be released Friday, was a perfect fit for her and Mr. Polanski, her husband of 25 years. They had long searched for a project to do together, she said - their last film was
Ninth Gate,” in 1999 - but were repeatedly frustrated by that old saw, a dearth of good female roles.
“There’s a lot of good roles for men, always, and for very young girls,” said Ms. Seigner, 47, who has also nurtured a singing career. “But for women, not so many.”
That changed two years ago at Cannes, when Mr. Polanski was handed the script of
Venus in Fur,” the steamy
Tony-nominated play, by
David Ives.
The play was a recasting of the 1870 novella “Venus in Furs” by the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote a thinly veiled fictionalization of his obsession with sexual domination. His surname would inspire the term masochism, and his book, the Velvet Underground song of the
same title, and eventually Mr. Ives’s take, which according to Theater Communications Group, the national trade organization, was the most produced play of the 2013-14 season.
Mr. Ives’s version tells of a male playwright trying to cast the role of Mr. Sacher-Masoch’s dominant ideal, Wanda von Dunajew. A seemingly ditsy actress named Vanda arrives late to audition and ends up dandling him like a cat toy, before revealing herself possibly to be a bona fide sent-from-the-heavens goddess.
Though Mr. Polanski had not seen the stage production - neither he nor Ms. Seigner have - he was sold.
“I was laughing aloud reading the play,” Mr. Polanski wrote in an email. (He has avoided the United States since fleeing
charges of unlawful sex, with a minor in 1977, and lives in Paris and Gstaad, Switzerland.) “And knowing Emmanuelle’s potential, I knew it was a role she could do exceptionally well.”
Mr. Polanski had already brought the Broadway and West End hit “God of Carnage” to the screen, shortening its name to “Carnage” and earning mixed reviews. Yet there would be marked differences between Mr. Ives’s piece and Mr. Polanski’s version, as well as risks.
Continue reading the main story For one thing, the film would be in French. For another, the play has only two characters, which made for sizzling sexual tension live but might feel claustrophobic on screen. There was also the matter of casting. Mr. Ives and his director, Walter Bobbie, searched for six months for actresses to play Vanda before finding Nina Arianda, who was barely out of grad school but would win a Tony for her performance.
Mr. Polanski had a definitive Vanda in mind - his wife. Celebrated for her sultriness, Ms. Seigner has porcelain skin and bewitching turquoise eyes, making her a slam-dunk seductress. But she is also nearly 20 years Ms. Arianda’s senior, which changes the tenor of the material; she is also steelier than Ms. Arianda’s Vanda.
Ms. Seigner, who views the part as the role of a lifetime, said the age difference gave her no pause.
“This isn’t a role for a young girl,” she said. “It’s a role for a woman. You need to have a little bit of experience. And knowing of the man and of the relationships.”
And Mr. Ives, who said he originally envisioned a woman 25 to 45 for the role, said Ms. Seigner was ideal.
“For a play about a woman who could possibly be Aphrodite herself, to cast Emmanuelle Seigner is like typecasting,” he said. “She only needs the clamshell to stand on, and the costume is complete.”
The leap of “Venus in Fur” from stage to screen was swift - within a year. Mr. Polanski phoned Mr. Ives soon after reading the script, leaving a voice message that Mr. Ives has saved.
“He said: ‘Hello David, it’s Roman Polanski. I love your play, and want to do it as a movie,’ ” Mr. Ives recalled. “That’s a message you play over and over again to feel good.”
He said he also felt that Mr. Polanski, who built
his career, on seemingly small, suspenseful films - like
Knife in the Water,” and
Repulsion,” - was ideal. “The claustrophobia of those films and the sexual unraveling that goes on in them is very similar to the play,” Mr. Ives said.
Even better, Mr. Polanski wanted Mr. Ives to help him write the screenplay. While Mr. Ives had written films before, all had languished in development save for 1998’s
The Hunted,” with Harry Hamlin, a project he left because he found it overly violent. Working with Mr. Polanski, Mr. Ives said, was like going to “graduate school,” in an especially idyllic setting.
Deeming Paris too loud and busy to work in, Mr. Polanski instead invited Mr. Ives and his wife, Martha, to his chalet in Gstaad, in August 2012. As Ms. Ives hiked the Alps, Mr. Polanski and Mr. Ives refashioned the script into a screenplay, lolling in the chalet’s garden and working late into the night.
“Everything he did was pulling the strings a little tighter,” Mr. Ives said. “It was like having an X-ray put on my play.”
Ten days later, they were done. Mr. Ives met up with Mr. Polanski and Ms. Seigner a few months later for tweaks; Mr. Polanski had the set built in an abandoned Paris theater and shot the film over 28 days in January 2013. The French actor
Mathieu Amalric, - who starred in
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” which featured Ms. Seigner - took the role of the addled playwright.
During filming, Ms. Seigner said, she realized how much her acting had ripened since she last worked with her husband, 14 years before.
In the past, she said, Mr. Polanski’s exacting direction sometimes left her feeling frozen: He frames each shot as meticulously as a pointillist. But with
Venus,” she felt seasoned and at ease.
“Sometimes, you need to have a lot of experience to keep your soul and self within his demands, which is very precise,” Ms. Seigner said. “I know now how to deal with it.”
The film had its premiere at Cannes last year to
warm reviews, and earned Mr. Polanski a standing ovation. Afterward, on the red carpet before a bank of photographers, Mr. Ives leaned over to his wife. “Take a good look, babe,” he murmured. “You don’t get to see this every day.”
Ms. Seigner and Mr. Polanski are unsure whether they will work together again - though he will direct one of her music videos. At the very least, Ms. Seigner said, she is going to hold out for meaty roles.
“I always felt I was a bit underused,” she said. “I’m very picky now. After this role, I can’t do something stupid.”
And her husband is on board.
“Emmanuelle may feel like this is a role of her lifetime,” Mr. Polanski wrote by email, “but I’m convinced she can do more.”
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