Abdellatif Kechiche’s Venus Noire Movie Analysis

The Tunisian movie-director Abdellatif Kechiche’s Venus Noire forces viewers back into 19th century France and England. This is a new theatre where a renaissance of scientific breakthrough is filling academia with knowledge of peoples of all races. Though this new science appeals to the wealthy, White elite, the reality is that these findings are merely Social Darwinism concealed as sound, methodical conclusion. Saartjie, the “Hottentot Venus,” is the example that French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, presents to his audience. But only as the movie continues does the story behind the Hottentot Venus’ capturing story begin to take form.

We are transported five years prior to Cuvier’s lecture in Paris to a circus in London. A main attraction consists of Saartjie acting as a primitive fool, and then engaging the audiences by letting them touch her buttocks as the show comes to an end. She cannot take this emotional abuse from Caezar’s show much longer, and some government officials began to question if this exhibition were slavery in disguise. Still, Saartjie denies all charges against Caezar for fear of her future without his financial support.

However, before the situation becomes too risky, Caezar exchanges money with Reaux, a suspicious bear-tamer, for Saartjie’s employment. But before Saartjie has a chance to contemplate her future, she is already performing in the same degrading shows, only this time in French salons with Reaux. She begins to rebel and is then utilized as a prostitute who eventually falls victim to fatal venereal disease. Saartjie is then sold to French scientists who portion and keep parts of her body, while her body’s shape is preserved in a plaster model. From there, we are turned full circle as we approach the scene of Georges Cuvier’s lecture that we saw at the beginning of the movie, this time more familiar with the struggle to procure such a fine specimen.

Venus Noire retains a degree of humor, though morbid, among these painful routines that Saartjie endures. For instance, Caezar is true to his name through his tyrannical treatment of Saartjie. His maneuvers to maintain control over her are an embodiment of European nations’ attempts to fight to colonize Africa for their upper han

d in the status quo. In a later show that is strangely reminiscent of Orwell’s Brave New World, Reaux invites the audience in the French salon to partake in touching Saartjie’s genitalia, giving a one-sided sense of “everyone [belonging] to everyone.” From her beginning tour as an actress, the masses consume her artistry; as a scholarly model, French intellectuals learn from Saartjie’s physical features, transforming them into rationalization for dialogues of racial hierarchy. Overall, this emphasis on the vulgar consumption of Saartjie from start to finish is not simply devouring material that is only to be spit out. Instead, this overindulgence is testament to a cycle of consumer items that are digested and then degraded at each stage.

Venus Noire pushes its viewers into the periphery, giving us a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the story. As an audience, we are thus forced to watch from the sidelines during every scene. During scenes placed in London, this effectively makes us audience to the show that presents Saartjie as a tamed creature by Caezar; in Paris, we too become part of the French salon that partakes in defiling Saartjie’s genitalia; finally, we watch in horror as Saartjie is reduced to a career in the world’s oldest profession and dies from the lack of effective medical treatment. By this time, we are exhausted and numbed from these traumatizing images. Nevertheless, Saartjie’s body is not put to rest. It is instead preserved for scientific investigation.

Using these scenes, Kechiche forcefully wields his directing over Venus Noire, leaving viewers mentally imprinted—perhaps even bruised. Through such scenes, Kechiche cleaves Saartjie’s character into quarters: her career in London, then in Paris, her fall into prostitution, and eventual position as a scientific curiosity. With the number of disasters and the abuse Saartjie must endure, Kechiche makes very clear his one-sidedness to onlookers: This is truly how ugly life could be made; being a passive bystander is not at all, nor should it be, a comfortable option. Although Kechiche takes no prisoners, it would prove difficult to argue that Venus Noire does not explicitly and effectively portray a case study into the twisted history behind European colonialism.

Notwithstanding, the direction that Kechiche takes with Venus Noire is not at all above scrutiny. First things first, the movie’s length is excessive. At nearly three hours of watching, the film drags on, transforming into an exhausting marathon that dissolves the audiences’ patience. Still, the ways in which Kechiche guided us through a part of Saartjie’s life story were not exhaustive. Variety Reviews does bring up an interesting point as to Venus Noire putting the British in a more favorable light than the French, making it seem as though the British law were trying to protect Saartjie and the French as abusing her. This is unfair, seeing as how the British were no less guilty of the notion of colonialism.

One of Saartjie’s curious aspects was her near-silence. Although an unorthodox protagonist, Saartjie’s role as a quiet character posits her as more passive, perhaps helpless. This does leave audiences with much less, if any at all, insight into the inner workings of Saartjie’s decision-making and emotions. Though such situations are realistic, this distanced relationship between character and her audience consequently leaves movie-watchers without the satisfaction of some concrete, moral prize to remember after the movie has finished. In defense of her character, Yahima Torres, the actress who plays Saartjie, has countered that her character is most often in an environment where she cannot speak Afrikaans. Torres added that Saartjie could find solitude in her silence. Unfortunately, this argument falls flat. During her time with Caezar, Saartjie is only the loquacious individual that Torres supports when she is pushed beyond her emotional means. Otherwise, even in an Afrikaans-suitable environment, she remains more often than not silent.

In reflection of Saartjie’s suffering in London and Paris, a troubling part of the telling of her story is the utter lack of background before she even arrives to Europe. Though Venus Noire shows that Saartjie is often not in control of where she ultimately performs, Kechiche has completely neglected to tell audiences what terms forced her into going to Europe. This is disconcerting because Venus Noire already portrays Saartjie as an oppressed character with few chances to express her emotions and thoughts. So, this unknown exacerbates the dissonance of Saartjie’s place as the movie’s protagonist. This is a jarring position for two reasons: it defies convention of stories requiring steadfast protagonists, and, because of the previous reason, it puts movie-watchers further into the position of following the story of an increasingly obscure stranger.

Though the movie demands an investment from the audience, the effect Kechiche’s piece has on its viewers is provoking a special class of thought. Venus Noire makes viewers question what the experience of watching movies should feel like, reflect on what is actually gained from watching cinema, and challenge what it means to be protagonist of a story. While Kechiche’s directing is not immune to critique, his stance is engaging. The question is clearly not if colonialism were beautiful, but his distancing of the audience from Saartjie does give movie-watchers a rare opportunity to analyze her character in an organic manner.