A fresh start

 

xoxo

Pablo

 

 

Não te quero senão porque te quero,

e de querer-te a não te querer chego,
e de esperar-te quando não te espero,
passa o meu coração do frio ao fogo.
Quero-te só porque a ti te quero,
Odeio-te sem fim e odiando te rogo,
e a medida do meu amor viajante,
é não te ver e amar-te,
como um cego.
Talvez consumirá a luz de Janeiro,
seu raio cruel meu coração inteiro,
roubando-me a chave do sossego,
nesta história só eu me morro,
e morrerei de amor porque te quero,
porque te quero amor,
a sangue e fogo.

In the middle of the night

 

A sudden urge to kiss you. A kiss. And ready. Accepted?

It's all about me

 

 

You know I will adore you 'til eternity.

I just call to say I love you

 

 

But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you.

Santa baby

 

 

Santa honey, I wanna yacht and really that's
Not a lot
I've been an angel all year
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight.

 

Envie

 

You stayed away. I locked away my memories of you. Tight.

Come here

 

I miss you.

 

 

P.S- I will if you will.

Farewell, Mr. O’Toole

All I couldn’t say, all I should have said

 

 

I am attracted to the idea
of your lips
exploring my body
as if it were a map
and you kept getting lost
on purpose.

Stop

 

and stare.

 

(I'm shakin' off the rust)

To love somebody

 

A doçura mata.
A luz salta às golfadas.
A terra é alta.
Tu és o nó de sangue que me sufoca.
Dormes na minha insónia como o aroma entre os tendões
da madeira fria. És uma faca cravada na minha
vida secreta. E como estrelas
duplas
consanguíneas, luzimos de um para o outro
nas trevas.

[Herberto Helder]

Love me

 

 

Treat me like a fool,
Treat me mean and cruel,
But love me.

Wring my faithful heart,
Tear it all apart,
But love me.

If you ever go,
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
I'll be sad and blue,
Crying over you, dear only.

I would beg and steal
Just to feel your heart
Beatin' so close to mine

If you ever go,
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
I'll be sad and blue,
Crying over you, dear only.

I would beg and steal
Just to feel your heart
Beatin' so close to mine

If you ever go,
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
Beggin' on knees,
All I ask is please, please love me
Oh yeah

That I'm sheltered by your heart

 

Touch me now, I close my eyes and dream away.

 

 

Man of Africa, hero of the world

 

Nelson Mandela

 

(1918-2013)

 

 

 Here

Cause all of me

 

loves all of you.

How are things?

 

 

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't, you know, tune in
But it's all right
That is I think it's not too bad

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

Always, no sometimes, think it's me
But you know I know when it's a dream
I think I know I mean a yes
But it's all wrong
That is I think I disagree

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever

 

So kiss me on this cold december night

 

I'm throught with love.

Wanderlust

 

 

Viver é um rasgar-se e remendar-se.

 

Guimarães Rosa

When the night has come and the land is dark

 

 

Oh heart, you’re so confusing.

 

 

 

You're so complex that you don't always respond to danger

 

 

Tu eras também uma pequena folha

que tremia no meu peito.

O vento da vida pôs-te ali.

A princípio não te vi: não soube

que ias comigo,

até que as tuas raízes

atravessaram o meu peito,

se uniram aos fios do meu sangue,

falaram pela minha boca,

floresceram comigo.

 

 

Pablo Neruda

My thoughts all stray, stray to you

 

 

 

At the moon in its flight
My thoughts all stray, stray to you
In the still of the night
While the world lies in slumber
Oh the times without number
Darling when I say to you

Do you love me
As I love you
Are you my life to be
That dream come true
Or will this dream of mine
Fade out of sight
Like the moon glowing dim
On the rim of the hill
In the chill, in the still of the night

Do you love me
As I love you
Are you my life to be
That dream come true
Or will this dream of mine
Fade out of sight
Like the moon glowing dim
On the rim of the hill
In the chill, in the still of the night
Of the night
Of the night



Cine Me

 

La vie d'Adèle

 

(Blue Is the Warmest Color)

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278871/

 

From the rumblings out of the Cannes Film Festival, I thought I knew what to expect from the 3-hour French drama Blue Is The Warmest Color, the ill-fated lesbian love drama with a lengthy sex scene that's caused a lot of hubbub. What I found, though, was something far less salacious and richer than I anticipated.

Though the drama at the movie's core is about the tumultuous relationship between young Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and her blue-haired girlfriend Emma (Léa Seydoux), it is not their story. It is just Adele's. At the film's start, she is a 17-year-old high school student with an eye toward a future in teaching. While her peers gush over boys, she seems bored by them, even when a cute senior notices her. Her brief tryst with him is nothing, though, compared to what happen when she spots a mysterious blue-haired tomboy on the street, then meets her again in a fateful first trip to a local lesbian bar.

From there a flirtation begins that causes both pleasure and pain for young Adele, the heady cocktail of love and sex contrasting with teasing from her classmates and later jealousy as Emma flirts with more mature women. While her relationship with the older Emma, an art student at local university, makes up most of the second and third acts, it is used as a tool to explore how Adele matures from crush-having kid to heartsick twenty-something. Much of the film's power is laid squarely on the shoulders of actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, and she is captivating, in turns an inscrutable teenager, then painfully vulnerable in her need for love and acceptance.

Seydoux is likewise extraordinary as Emma. It wasn't long ago that she'd have been believably cast in the role of the sexually curious young woman with more passion than sense. But her more mature role fittingly shows growth in this ingénue, giving her the chance to play the mentor, the one who should know better. Her scenes with Exarchopoulos are breathtaking and emotionally raw, whether they are ripping each other's clothes off or ripping into each other's hearts. Watching them go at each other, it’s easy to understand why the Palme d’Or prize was—for the first time ever—awarded not only a director (Abdellatif Kechiche) but also to its leads. Without these two and their dogged dedication to their roles, the film would never have come together so lushly.

 

This is no glorified portrait of the metamorphosis of girl to woman-- Kechiche shows Adele haloed by flyaway hairs, wearing little makeup, eating and fucking as if no one is watching. Kechiche brazenly shows a woman as she is--an exceptionally beautiful young woman, but still. Her beauty feels effortless and reckless, and that combined with his choice to drift from one slice of Adele's life to the next (literature class, dinner with her parents, flirting with Emma) gives the film an intimacy so deep it sometimes feels intrusive. With countless extreme close-ups., we are rarely more than a few inches from Adele's quivering lips, full lips and wet eyes. It's almost as if rather than watching her, Kechiche wants us to eat her up whole.

Which brings us to the big sex sequence. It's one of several within the film, each offering some character development through Adele’s reactions, whether bored, comforted, or elated. But the first time the key couple copulates is given a ten-minute montage of frank framing, revealing writhing bodies, ragged panting, and no chipper smiles for us or the camera. It's animalistic, and certainly speaks to the Adele and Emma's primal connection, but after a while it just feels purposefully over the top. Yes, it's titillating and images of female sexual pleasure in cinema are painfully lacking, but who dubbed Kechiche the one-man team to level the scales? It hits a point where it’s just too much, a choice the director makes again and again to the point of blatant self-indulgence.

Even at three hours long Blue Is The Warmest Color never wears out its appeal, but it is in essence a love story like we've seen again and again, except this time with bold lesbian sex and love. While pushy, it is a competent character study, but I found its details slipping away as soon as I left the theater. Kechiche presents Adele's tale in a blur of collisions in lengthy scenes of fights or sex, but rarely dwells to reveal their moments after. For instance, when Adele is attacked at school once it’s suspected she is gay, there's no scene of follow-up, either of her coming out to her peers or defiantly shrugging them off. Instead, we skip to Adele's next chapter, bypassing her coming-out completely and instead diving right into her less than happy home-life with Emma.

 

The French title for the film is La Vie d’Adele: Chapters 1 & 2 (The Life of Adele: Chapters 1 & 2), which adds some context the movie ultimately needs. The story is not complete, but is instead the beginning of Adele’s adult life. (Blue Is The Warmest Color is the name of the graphic novel on which its based.) Whatever the title, the film does push the envelope by giving voice to the story of a sexually fluid young woman, and by defiantly displaying raw and earnest intercourse unlike many audiences are like to have seen before. But ultimately, Kechiche’s direction feels so heavy-handed that it undercuts the beautiful roughness of its first love story and the emotional vulnerability its actresses so boldly displayed. His ego and drive to push the boundaries detract from the movie’s best attribute, which is the dual performances that make three hours fly by.

 

 

You should all go to see this ...male and female alike...though perhaps don't take your Mother !

 

 

Hello, December

 

 

 

A Restauração da Independência é a designação dada ao golpe de estado revolucionário ocorrido a 1 de dezembro de 1640, chefiada por um grupo designado de Os Quarenta Conjurados e que se alastrou por todo o Reino, pela revolta dos portugueses contra a tentativa da anulação da independência do Reino de Portugal pela governação da Dinastia filipina castelhana, e que vem a culminar com a instauração da 4.ª Dinastia Portuguesa - a casa de Bragança - com a aclamação de D. JoãoD. IV.
Esse dia, designado como Primeiro de Dezembro ou Dia da Restauração , é comemorado anualmente em Portugal com muita pompa e circunstância desde o tempo da monarquia constitucional. Uma das primeiras decisões da República Portuguesa, em 1910, foi passá-lo a feriado nacional como medida popular e patriótica. No entanto, essa decisão foi revogada pelo XIX Governo Constitucional, de Passos Coelho, passando o feriado a comemorar-se em dia não útil a partir de 2012.

 

 

Baby this ain't the way

 

 

(hold me / kiss me / make me / believe / do you / want me /
to stay / really / want me / to stay...)

I wanna make it

i wanna make it and make it for you
i just can't take the feeling i feel so true

and i gather my moods for you,love
i wanna make it and make it
for love and for fun
i wanna make it and make it for you
i just can't take these
feelings i feel so blue
then i get all these moods
from your heart

time can't erase how i'm feeling for you

so i'll just keep all this joy
from above
i just can't break this
feeling,i feel so new
that i get all my moods from your soul

 

i wanna make it and make it
for love and for fun
i wanna make it and make it
for you i cannot shake
this feelin i feel for you but i can give all my moods to the stars
i wanna make it and make it
for love and for fun
i wanna make it and make it for you.



Cine Me

 

 

Shadow Dancer

 

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1770734/

 

 

http://www.magpictures.com/shadowdancer/

 

 

This suspenseful yarn, about a young woman’s betrayal of the people she holds most dear, translates elegantly from the page to the screen under the aegis of Academy Award-winning director James Marsh (Man on Wire).

 

The movie takes no political positions. With an icy detachment, it peers through the fog of war and examines the slippery military intelligence on both sides to portray a world steeped in secrecy, deception and paranoia.  

 

  “Shadow Dancer” is ominously subdued and grimly taciturn. The dialogue is minimal. Only what has to be said is said, and the tone of most of it is one of quiet urgency. Except for a red jacket that Collette wears, everything is photographed in shades of gray. Characters are glimpsed through reflecting glass, curtained windows and half-opened doors.

Ms. Riseborough’s gripping performance is remarkable for its stillness. Even at the most stressful moments, Collette never loses her composure, except in one desperate moment with Mac, when her bottled-up emotion escapes like a scalding burst of steam from a pressure cooker. Soon enough, she dons her mask of sphinxlike calm. 

 

  Something in this gloomy conspiracy thriller set in 1990s Belfast reminded me of an exchange between Ivor Claire and Guy Crouchback, in Evelyn Waugh's Officers and Gentlemen. Ivor asks Guy what he would do if challenged to a duel. Guy replies: "Laugh", but Ivor responds thoughtfully: "One hundred and fifty years ago, we would have to fight if challenged. Now we'd laugh. There must have been a time when it was rather an awkward question." In the 1970s, an IRA man knew it was his duty to attack the British with every violent means, but in 2012, with Martin McGuinness shaking hands with the Queen, the idea is laughable. In 1993, the era of the Downing Street declaration and the Good Friday agreement, republican footsoldiers found themselves confronted with Ivor Claire's "awkward question". 

 

For some reason, Colette wears a vivid red shiny-looking coat, which makes her look more like a strippergram than an undercover agent. Surely she should be wearing something less conspicuous? And the last act and the final reveal, in which the murky conspiracy is brought to light, doesn't deliver quite the hard narrative punch I was hoping for.

Riseborough's performance is certainly very good, though, and another demonstration of her technique, intelligence and versatility: she is so good at suggesting thoughts and emotions that surface slowly and gradually. And the movie is very good at showing the sheer misery of the time. In one republican pub, a tense notice says: "Singing Not Allowed." Nothing shows the mood of national depression and fear more clearly than that.

 

The acting is excellent, especially the central performance of Andrea Riseborough, who manages to express Colette's doubts and anxieties while retaining a core of moral mystery. There is a mortifying final revelation towards which the film's title enigmatically points. But nothing is quite as good as the film's opening sequences, and the movie is a little too dogged in avoiding substantive politics.

 

 

 

More than

 

 

Walking near our limits: dangerously close. But do not touch.

 

 

It's a gentle caress that follows me everywhere

 

 

But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep, your face is up against mine, and I’m too terrified to speak.

I crave

 

 

"I crave your legs intertwined with mine, I crave nothing but you, in the most simplest of ways."

From heaven with love

 

 

 

Certa palavra dorme na sombra
de um livro raro. Como desencantá-la?
É a senha da vida
a senha do mundo.
Vou procurá-la.

Vou procurá-la a vida inteira
no mundo todo.
Se tarda o encontro, se não a encontro,
não desanimo,
procuro sempre.

Procuro sempre, e minha procura
ficará sendo
minha palavra. 

 

 

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

 

 

P.S-  Miss you like crazy.

 

 

My heart : here & where you are

 

 

Trying to tell myself I have no reason with your heart.

 

 

when dreams come
crashing down like trees
i don't know what love can do

when life is
hanging in the breeze
i don't know what love can do

 

 



Hey, love

 

Hey love
You're my one true soul desire
Hey love, baby
Can you feel this burning fire

Black lace

 

 

A minha Dor, vesti-a de brocado,
Fi-la cantar um choro em melopeia,
Ergui-lhe um trono de oiro imaculado,
Ajoelhei de mãos postas e adorei-a.

 

 

José Régio

 

Well, I'm a woman of many wishes

 

hope my premonition misses.

A lonely rhythm all night long

 

 

So tenderly
Your story is
Nothing more
Than what you see
Or
What you've done
Or will become
Standing strong
Do you belong
In your skin
Just wondering

P.S- I need someone to hold

I wanna feel the heat

 

Love this song !

'Til I see you again

 

 

I'll be right here rememberin' when

 

(And what if I never kiss your lips again
Or feel the touch of your sweet embrace )

 

So I'll just have to believe
Somewhere out there you thinking of me

Whisper some sweet words in my ear

I only have eyes for you

 

The best ideas are dangerous.

Cine Me

 

The Counselor

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2193215/

 

http://www.thecounselormovie.com/us/

 

Ridley Scott's violent Tex-Mex action thriller is all mouth and no trousers. But it's quite a mouth: the original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy is (for a while) seductive, elusive and allusive. It's a sub-David Mamet Esperanto of tough-guy worldliness, hinting at a world of evil. Devotees of the Coens' version of his No Country for Old Men, with its horrible garotte scene, may feel their hearts sinking with the initial mention here of a hi-tech strangulation device, introduced in the opening reel on the same principle as Chekhov's famous act-one pistol. There's a crazy-paving mosaic of cast and plot.

 

Michael Fassbender is a yuppie lawyer, addressed only as "counsellor" in the American style, who has evidently gleaned info and contacts from the clientele to get him in on a huge Colombian drug deal. Penélope Cruz plays his super-sexy fiancee, Laura (an innocent civilian in this wicked world); Javier Bardem is the counsellor's goofy contact, Reiner; Brad Pitt phones in one of his cheerfully unworried wiseguy roles; and Cameron Diaz plays Reiner's sinister, badass girlfriend, Malkina. The narrative pings around as meaninglessly and entertainingly as a pinball machine at first, but the comic timing feels off, without the finish of Christopher McQuarrie's The Usual Suspects or, say, Tarantino's version of Elmore Leonard in Jackie Brown. McCarthy woefully runs out of ideas before the end of this long film, especially as far as poor Laura is concerned.

 

Despite its A list credentials, this film struggles to emerge from the shadow of Breaking Bad and No Country For Old Men.

 

Ridley Scott directs an original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy that hands cracking lines and a keynote car sex scene to Cameron Diaz but leaves Michael Fassbender and Javier Bardem flailing to flesh out cartoons.

 

 

I started something

 

 

 I couldn't finish. 

Butterfly

 

 

«Now that I've met you

Would you object to

Never seeing each other again».

I wanna feel you in my arms again

 

 

You know the door to my very soul
Youre the light in my deepest darkest hour
Youre my saviour when I fall
And you may not think
I care for you
When you know down inside
That I really do
And it's me you need to show

You make the simplest things sound so intriguing

 

 

 

estou finalmente sozinho comigo mesmo, algures, num ponto desconhecido do Universo. uma voz quase estelar perturba, todo o meu corpo treme. são muitas horas passadas com a casa encostada à vidraça. olhando o mar. olhando até que nem mar, nem coisa nenhuma me vem ao olhar.
o mar vem, então, de dentro de mim, e não se parece nada com aquele que vejo.
são muitas horas sem minutos. são muitas horas sem ninguém, de deserto em deserto, à espera que a noite desça e esconda tudo com seu soluço de sombras. e me esconda a mim, também, dos seus próprios pensamentos. um escuro tão total que ao passar uma mão pela outra não a sinto. o corpo diluído na própria espessura da noite, enfim para descansar.
é no instante fulgurante em que já não tenho corpo, nem sentimentos, nem desejos, que surgem as palavras, ainda sem forma ao papel, ainda sem mentiras. ainda sem significado algum. uma espécie de linguagem musical quase indecifráve.

 

Al Berto

Cine me

 

Malavita

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404311/

 

http://thefamilymovie.tumblr.com/

 

Billed as an action comedy and adapted from Tonino Benacquista's novel, director Luc Besson's film suffers from an identity crisis. Released elsewhere as The Family, here in India, the film is called Malavita. And if you were to ask, what's in a name? Well...

The film gets its name after the faithful canine, which the family loses in a bloody fight. But Malavita is not the dog's story. Unless it denotes, that every mobster leads a dog's life! This is the tale of mobster Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro) and his family that includes his wife, daughter, son and his dog. Giovanni, after snitching on his mafia friends, is forced to lead a nomadic life along with his family. They relocate with assumed identities, under the US government's Witness Relocation Program to protect themselves as there is a contract on his head and a hit man on their trail. The problem is, instead of leading a quiet life; they keep drawing attention to themselves by refusing to put up with disrespect and injustice, which is fairly constant.

In Normandy, Giovanni is Fred Blake who pretends to be an aspiring writer after he finds a discarded old manual typewriter. He decides to write his memoirs against the wishes of his wife, Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Agent Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones), who is saddled to keep the Blakes alive. The rest of the family too has their share of action, a-la-mob.

The film speaks about issues of good and evil, honesty and deceit, intelligently and insightfully. The criminal psyche of Fred is justified with his good intentions. The film dwells on the lines of Goodfellas and makes a couple of references to it.

Most characters in the film are stereotypical and predictable. The actors give convincing and intense performances. But what's missing is the mystery and serious element as the story thrives on absurdities and coincidences, especially in the scenes that lead to the climax. Also, the climax does not elicit any real thrill or tension.

The sound and background score is effectively used in the film. But it is the dialogues that would be bothersome for the Indian audience, as the 'F' word which appears in every second dialogue, is blipped due to censorship issues.

Designed as a semi-period film, there are serious tonal issues with Malavita. Besson, along with co-writer Micheal Caleo, has tried hard to maintain an even keel with the presentation.

 

The structure fluctuates between a noir mobster film and a comedy.

I'm fool to want you

 

 

 

I'm a fool to want you
I'm a fool to want you
To want a love that can't be true
A love that's there for others too

I'm a fool to hold you
Such a fool to hold you
To seek a kiss not mine alone
To share a kiss the Devil has known

Time and time again I said I'd leave you
Time and time again I went away
But then would come the time when I would need you
And once again these words I'd have to say

I'm a fool to want you
Pity me, I need you
I know it's wrong, it must be wrong
But right or wrong I can't get along
Without you

Time and time again I said I'd leave you
Time and time again I went away
But then would come the time when I would need you
And once again these words I'd have to say

Take me back, I love you
Pity me, I need you
I know it's wrong, it must be wrong
But right or wrong I can't get along

Without you

 

To be alive

I exist in two places,here and where you are.

Margaret Atwood

Ingenuity and a birdcage

 

 

HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IN LOVE with birdcage veils.

 

Sometimes called Russian veils or French netting, they are sexy and sophisticated, and in black, can add a little edge and a lot of chic-ness to an everyday outfit. 

Cine Me

 

 

 

 

 

Venus in Fur

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2406252/

 

 

Comedy, drama, darkness and madness dominate this fantastical little film.

 

Roman Polanski's Venus in Fur hit me like a breath of fresh air on my thursday afternoon.

 

Opening with a sequence I'd more associate with a Tim Burton and Danny Elfman collaboration, we're greeted by a wicked rain storm and an upbeat, gothic score from Alexandre Desplat as the camera splits a tree-lined street.

The perspective veers right to reveal a rundown Paris theatre. The camera comes to rest in front of the theatre doors, which eventually swing open to reveal Thomas (Mathieu Amalric), a stage writer working to put together his directorial debut, but after seeing 30 actresses he still can't seem to find the right one to play the lead role, Vanda. He turns and we learn it wasn't just a camera we were tracking into the theater, but a sopping wet actress (Emmanuelle Seigner), late for her audition.

 

Venus in Fur is based on the play by David Ives and follows this writer/director and actress as Thomas just wants to go home to his financee, but is ultimately manipulated into letting this brash, to-the-point actress read for the role. After all, her name is the same as the character he's attempting to cast... it could be a sign from the gods.

 

The production Thomas is casting is in fact an adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book "Venus in Fur", which, along with Marquis de Sade, contributed to the founding of the term sadomasochism. The narrative of Thomas' play and the film finds similar thematic parallels to sadomasochism on multiple levels, not only in terms of the play -- a story of a man who gives himself over to being a slave to a woman -- but of the relationship between an actor and a director. The film plays almost like a fantasy and does so with plenty of wry humor. In fact, if you aren't laughing within the first ten minutes or so you may just want to leave the theater, because the rest will likely fall flat for you.

I found immediate joy in the film, both in Amalric and Seigner's performances, but also in the sharp and occasionally dark screenplay, which has its fun with gender roles and, for as much as we know, may all be going on in Thomas' head.

 

However, to the point of whether or not it's all real or not, I couldn't care less. I was entertained by the film on a surface level, any additional conversation simply adds to the enjoyment, though I find it not in the least bit necessary. Vanda, walking in from the rain gives off the appearance of being a clueless clod, desperate more than accomplished and/or familiar with the craft she wishes to trade in.

However, as the film progresses over a brisk 96 minutes (played out in real-time), we learn not only is she a talented actress, but she knows how to manipulate the house lights, has come prepared with all the appropriate costuming and props and knows the screenplay line-by-line as well as its source material. I loved the way she playfully teases Thomas and Seigner's seduction is just a much a treat as is Amalric's stubborn, wide-eyed denial before he ultimately gives in.

The film ranges from comical to serious and Desplat's score serves as the final indicator, almost manipulating the audience as much as Vanda is manipulating Thomas. Without the score guiding the atmosphere the film could be received as much darker and almost horrific. Inject a few dream-within-a-dream sequences and graphic S&M scenes and Polanski could have turned this into something sinister, rather than the jaunty exercise in dramaturgy it is.

 

You can find as much or as little as you want in Venus in Fur.  Whatever the case may be, I'm loving Polanski's current trend of adapting the stage to screen in quick, energy-filled bursts.

Two years ago he delivered Carnage, based on Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning drama, and now with his adaptation of Ives' play he's managed to once again find a delicate line between drama and madness in a film that is less a war of words than what we saw in Carnage and more of a tennis match where Thomas is supremely outmatched, but I get the impression he wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Polanski knows the jig is up: this is a beautifully framed mounting of a play, filmed elegantly with simply composed shots.

 

 

A tasty light hors d'oeuvre rather than a full meal.