Polanski has fun with verbal battle of sexes
VENUS IN FUR (15) Dir: Roman Polanski With: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner Runtime: 96 minutes
★★★
THE battle of the sexes moves on to an oh-so-French front in this sly and gleeful two-hander directed by Roman Polanski.
Mathieu Amalric is the playwright struggling with how to bring his masterwork about sado-masochism to the waiting masses.
When Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) arrives late for her audition, he cannot believe this ditzy blonde could ever grasp the complexity of his work.
Adapted from the play by David Ives, Venus in Fur makes a virtue of its staginess, allowing the two actors to go at it verbal hammer and tongs with nothing in the way of distractions.
That they manage to hold the attention for so long is tribute to the sheer classiness of the performances.
It would be easier to take the argument about female empow- erment more seriously, however, if Seigner didn’t spend most of the movie in her skimpies. Cameo, Edinburgh, from May 30; Glasgow Film Theatre, June 13-16
MALEFICENT (3D) (PG) Dir: Robert Stromberg With: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning
★★★
EVEN by the high standards of Disney villainesses, the fairy who sent Sleeping Beauty to her fate has to be near the top of the tree for pure evil.
In this live-action picture, Disney takes the story of Sleeping Beauty right back to the start to find out just what made Maleficent so compellingly malevolent.
A perfectly-cast Angelina Jolie, complete with horns and cheekbones that could cut diamonds, plays the fearsome lady who spoils a good christening with her curses.
Elle Fanning co-stars as Aurora, the baby she puts a hex on – to fall into everlasting sleep when she turns 16 – but who in fact turns out to be a forceful character in her own right.
Director Robert Stromberg has won two Oscars for art direction (Avatar, Alice in Wonderland), so the piece certainly looks magnificent.
The pace is frustratingly sluggish to start with, though, leaving Jolie and Fanning to give the tale its oomph with their sparring.
A nicely old-fashioned fairy tale, nevertheless.