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Black Venus, Abdelatif Kechiche

  • Writer: Gergana Todorova
    Gergana Todorova
  • Jan 1, 2016
  • 5 min read

Black Venus is a movie directed by the French-Tunisian screenwriter, actor and director Abdellatif Kechiche. This is a historical period drama set between 1810 and 1817 year. It was released in 2009, and the movie’s main actress, Yahima Torres, won the Lumières Award in 2011 for Female Revelation of the Year. Kechiche began his directing career in 2000 with the movie Poetical Refugee, and his next movies achieved success in comparison with Black Venus, which was a commercial failure. His movies involve social problems, and he has a very naturalistic style, privileging the characters in merge. This is his first history movie, but the main character is also in merge like the protagonists in his previous films.

In Black Venus, Saartjie Baartman (Yahima Torres) is an African domestic woman who has lost her child. She is brought up by her boss and master Ceazer in Europe with hope for better life and fortune, as Ceazer promised her a great career as an artist.

Nonetheless, Ceazer exposes her at fair shows in London, where she receives no money and is exhibited like a monster, among monkeys and bears. Seeing the woman treated as a slave, some conscientious men try to stop the intimidating show but Ceazer ushers Saartjie and his friend Réaux always to Paris. There, French scientists from The Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris are interested in her particular anatomy and resemblance with apes. Thus, against her will, she is treated like a guinea pig and is manipulated to continue being exhibited at carnivals, aristocratic salons among libertines and eventually at brothels. She is given the name Hottentote Venus during the shows. Eventually, at age 27 she dies from respiratory and venereal maladies.

The movie presents the story of Hottentote Venus in a progression of humiliations. The first time when we see the character, she is acting like savage women, who cannot speak, who shouts and appears dangerous like a wild beast. Often during the show scenes, the director pans in on the face of the women in order to show how embarrassing is the show for her. We also are shown her bad habits, the ones that eventually destroy her – -alcohol and cigarettes, symbols of civilization. After every show, her only consolation is to get drunk and smoke in excess.

The movie contains a lot of scenes that are like a sort of a rupture. These are the moments where Saartjie tries to rebel against her masters. Every time when she does, the moviegoer expects that things will get better but her situation only gets worse.

First, Venus is exhibited in front of the English public, where people crave to see things appealing to the lower senses in man. But in comparison with the French public, the people in London seem almost modest. French people are presented as savages, who want to touch and humiliate the body of the women, and who do not care that she is a human being. Thus, they are amused when people crowed up against the black women, touching her furiously.

After her first act of rebellion, Venus plays music and sings beautifully, instead of pretending not to know how to play and singing bad in order to show her primitive nature. Her master gets angry at this display. She is trying to explain him that this is not the life of an artist that he promised her, and it appears that Saartjie is going to change her situation. Instead, things get worse. Later in the movie, we see her in private quarters where her master starts to beat her back parts like she is a horse. So the exhibitions become more humiliating. She is not only humiliated as a species of savage monster, but like a sexual object for amusement. The structure of the movie presents different episodes of her life, with a progression of scenes leading to her physical and psychological destruction.

The public ignominy increases with every attempt that Venus makes to change her condition. In one scene, she is breast naked and on her knees during a party with prostitutes, where one of these women ascends her, exposing her breast. Increasingly, the shows become more sexual as Saartjie make her wear more feminine and vulgar clothes and the intimate parts of her body are exhibited. This abjection achieves its height when her naked lower parts are exhibited in front of these people late in the movie. Her master is screaming for them to touch her, to be not scared of the perversion, and then we see the dark side of the people who surround her like a prey stalked by beasts.

Throughout the movie, Venus is shown as an object – at first as a fair attraction, then a sexual object and finally as a scientific curiosity. Eventually she becomes literary an object-she becomes a sculpture, the same one which we saw on flashback in the beginning of the movie.

But even at the end of the movie when she’s at rock bottom and attempts to become a prostitute, she is even banished from the brothel because of her numerous infections. Still, Venus manages to radiate some dignity. That impression is made with her sad and cold expression, which we could see in the beginning of the movie at the fair shows. She is always silent and the way she attempts to rebel or show she is human is intelligent and creative. For example, at one of the demimonde parties, her master wants that she gives an appeal to the most beautiful women in the room. Long time she examines all the women and finally she eats the appeal. Another example is a scene in the fair at the beginning where she is supposed to play and sing falsely, but in surprise to her master, she shows her beautiful voice and people are enchanted by her. Her silent revolts show her strong character. We can see the pain in her eyes and her facial expressions, but she always keeps her emotions in check, except in the most embarrassing moment that can be compared with rape – the exhibition of her private parts. Venus is a strong woman who tries to accept her condition with dignity. Thus, when we see her at the end as a street prostitute, when the man leaves the room after sex, she never forgets to be polite and says « Thank you, Mister ». So she is the person who carried all the humiliation, but she remains the most decent and real human in the story, because through her abjection we see the low values of the other people deprived of humanity and dignity who has made her suffer.

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