Black Venus – Venus Noire (2010)

Directed by: Abdellatif Kechiche | 159 minutes | drama, history | Actors: Yahima Torres, Andre Jacobs, Olivier Gourmet, Elina Löwensohn, François Marthouret, Michel Gionti, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Jonathan Pienaar, Rémi Martin, Jean-Jacques Moreau, Cyril Favre, Dominique Ratonnat, Didier Bourguignon, Ralph Amoussou

French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche came up with the highly acclaimed ‘Le graine et le mulet’ in 2007, a carefully crafted family drama centered around a divorced boat worker who wants to start a couscous restaurant. For some time Kechiche had been planning for a film about ‘Saartjie’ Baartman, a member of the Cape Khoikhoi people who lived around 1800 and were known for her special body proportions. Kechiche’s meticulous description of Baartman’s time in Europe is as oppressive as it is humiliating; The key to this is a detailed historical setting, the permanent focus on Baartman and, in particular, the resigned imperturbability that the protagonist and star of the film Yahima Torres – a Cuban native who was stolen from the street by Kechiche in the Parisian working-class district of Belleville.

Saartjie’s attitude in ‘Black Venus’ is more or less comparable to that of ‘Precious’ from Lee Daniels’ American drama of the same name; like Precious, Saartjie is subjected to a great deal of humiliation, with her facial expression remaining so neutral that attention is constantly focused on the actions she has to perform and undergo. Saartjie, for example, is nothing more than a monkey in the circus act of her African master Hendrick Caezar (Andre Jacobs), who pretends to become a free woman through the money they earn ‘together’; she is nothing more than a scientific animal for anatomist Curvier (François Marthouret), and nothing more than a prostitute in the libertine salons of Paris, where her act with Caesar’s French successor Réaux (Olivier Gourmet) guarantees the temporary excitement of bored rich .

For the modern Westerner, the moral common thread is quickly found and boredom is lurking; however, the constant repetition of Saartjie’s hardships serves to expose determined power relations and attitudes in pre-industrial Europe and makes it clear that the silent giant does make choices, if only to survive. A pleasant sitting can therefore be impossible for ‘Black Venus’; the film is a 159-minute anatomy lesson in morality and can be considered long-winded or too rebellious, partly because of the performances by Jacobs and Gourmet. However, Kechiche delivers solid historical drama and ‘Black Venus’ is also enjoyable; what remains in the memory is a constantly cigar-smoking Saartjie, whose dignity in this film loses to racism in its purest form.