I saw Roman Polanski‘s Venus in Fur at the tail end of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. It finally opened two days ago (6.20) via Sundance Selects. “Spoken in French, it’s a one-set, two-character piece that’s set inside a smallish theatre in Paris during an evening rainstorm, and which began as an English-language play by David Ives,” I wrote on 9.24. “It was re-written by Ives and Polanski for the screen. It seems to mirror on some level the relationship between Polanski and his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, who costars along with Mathieu Almaric, who portrays the Polanski stand-in, a stage director, and who vaguely resembles the younger Polanski of the ’80s. Other than that it’s…well, I don’t want to abruptly dismiss any work by a great filmmaker but it really does feel like a minor work in a minor and restrictive key. Seigner delivers a snappy, saucy, highly-charged performance — I’ll give her that.”