lazarillo
A wealthy European art collector visits a brothel run by a high-class madam (Mandy Rice-Davies). There he encounters a black prostitute "Venus" (Jacqueline Jones), who is working in a room tastefully decorated to resemble the antebellum American South. He remembers that he met this girl before when years earlier he introduced her to a talented but starving artist. The collector then imagines events "as they might have happened" where the beautiful prostitute becomes a muse for the artist, inspiring a sculpture he calls "Black Venus". But the artist is ashamed he can't support his new love financially, so they break up, he descends into alcoholism, while she shacks up with a wealthy woman (Karin Schubert) whose husband is away. When the husband returns, he takes umbrage at his wife's sapphic relationship and takes, uh, revenge by forcing his own teenage mistress (Florence Guerin) on the black woman. The wife finds out, and both the black woman and the teenage mistress are kicked out of the house and end up in the brothel. The film then returns to the "present day" as the collector decides to "collect" the black woman, the teenager, AND the sculpture and take them all to scenic Spain (where they can frolic naked in the surf and comb each other's pubic hair). But the now-deranged artist is in hot pursuit. . .This is one of a series of early 80's softcore sex movies co-produced by European producer/writer Harry Alan Towers (aka Peter Welbeck) and the American Playboy Channel. Unlike, some of their other collaborations (like "Christine") this is a historical period piece with literary pretensions (it's loosely based on a novel by Honore de Balzac) that resembles other "high-class" sex films of that era like "Fanny Hill" and "Nana". It's not nearly as interesting as a lot of earlier Eurotica like the "Black Emmanuelle" films or the films that Towers had made years earlier with Jesus Franco. It is more interesting though than most of the boring swill from the Playboy Channel of that time. The sex scenes are too long--especially considering they consist exclusively of very softcore breast suckling and ass fondling. And even when the movie delves into questionable scenes, like the teenage mistress getting gang-raped, it never leaves the rather boring realm of harmless fantasy and "good taste"(none of the "rapists" actually takes off his pantaloons, for instance). But it obviously has more of a plot than usual and it IS relatively classy.Jacqueline Jones was an African-American actress who was never really seen again after this. She has a great body and is not a bad actress generally, but her decidedly "Foxy Brown" accent is a little anachronistic for the historical period when this story supposed takes place. Mandy Rice-Davies was infamous in real life for the early 60's "Profumo Affair" sex scandal in Britain (Bridget Fonda played her in the movie "Scandal"). Karin Schubert was a long-time Eurotica actress who was a little past her prime here, but interestingly was about to dive head-first into hardcore porn. And if I could say a few words about Florence Guerin: Pant! Drool! Slobber! That covers it pretty well. She would go on to do about as well as a young French actress could do in the once-great but collapsing Euro-exploitation industry of the 80's. This is alright I guess.
James Hitchcock
This film is supposedly based upon a story by Balzac, and although the action is shifted to the second half of the nineteenth century, two or three decades after the great writer's death in 1850, it certainly has the look of a period drama, with plenty of Victorian costumes and furniture and even a hansom cab on view. "Black Venus" is not, however, a standard piece of highbrow heritage cinema. Merchant-Ivory it ain't. The main character, Venus, is a beautiful young mulatto girl from Martinique who arrives in Paris, where she becomes a fashion model and the lover of a struggling young artist, Armand. (Struggling young artists, occasionally alternating with struggling young poets, are of course a stock character in any drama set in nineteenth-century Paris). After separating from Armand, Venus has a lesbian affair with Marie, a rich society lady, becomes a prostitute in a high-class brothel and ends up living in a ménage-a-trois with another girl and an elderly but wealthy libertine. That synopsis might sound like the plot of an "Emmanuelle" film translated to the Victorian era, and the film has indeed sometimes been referred to as soft-core porn, but that is perhaps not an appropriate description either. Although the film deals with matters sexual and the heroine appears nude on several occasions, there is in fact only one sex scene (which turns out to have been a dream), and this is done in a very restrained manner, less explicit than the love scenes in some mainstream Hollywood movies from this era. The script never states explicitly, in fact, that Venus and Marie actually are lovers; they are never shown in bed together, although it is certainly implied that they are more than just good friends. At times the film-makers seem to have been aiming at a piece of period erotica, but at others they seem to have believed themselves to be making a serious drama, especially when the film ends on a tragic note. What prevents the film from being taken seriously, apart from Venus's tendency to remove her clothes on the least provocation, is the standard of acting on display. The heroine is played by one Josephine Jacqueline Jones, a former Miss Bahamas. With an exquisite beauty reminiscent of a young Halle Berry, Josephine certainly had the looks of a Hollywood goddess, but in the acting business beauty and talent do not always run together, and this is one case where they ran very far apart indeed. In a vitriolic review of one of Katharine Hepburn's performances, Dorothy Parker wrote that "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B", and I have similar feelings about Miss Jones's attempts at acting. Except that in her case she never seems to get as far as B, and occasionally even seems to be struggling with A. Her main (indeed, her virtually only) technique for expressing emotion is to flash a coyly suggestive smile at any man, or occasionally woman, in her immediate vicinity. To be fair to Miss Jones, few if any of the other actors in the film display any more acting ability than she does, the actor playing Armand being particularly wooden. The supposedly tragic ending was ruined by the combined ineptitude of all those involved; to adapt Oscar Wilde's dictum on the death of Little Nell, as described by Dickens in "The Old Curiosity Shop", you would need a heart of stone to watch it without laughing. "Black Venus", which dates from 1983, is one of those films which it would have been kinder to forget. The fact that it is still turning up on television thirty years after it was made shows just how desperate some channels must be for material to fill their schedules. 3/10
Neil Welch
Black Venus tells the story of a young Caribbean woman in 19th century Paris and the sculptor who is both inspired and tormented by her.This is apparently based on a story by Honore de Balzac but, to be frank, I didn't watch it for my culture fix. If I explain that the young lady who plays Venus is a former Miss Bahamas and that she spends a lot of the film wearing less clothes than some clothes (as do assorted other fetching young ladies), this may go some way towards explaining my limited interest in this film.Josephine Jaqueline Jones as Venus is an attractive screen presence in every respect. Jose Antonio Deinos as tormented artist Armand is perfectly dreadful.
