In 1995 the Dutch independent filmmakers Maartje Seyferth and Victor Nieuwenhuijs released their first feature, Venus in Furs. It is a drama shot on black-and-white 35mm, adapted from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novella. The film does not try to move the book across line by line. What it keeps is the core of that inheritance: a man who wants to be enslaved, a woman who learns how to use that hunger, and the imbalance between them. The title Venus in Furs is also the phrase people have long used for a dominant woman and a man willing to submit.
As an art-house film the pace is slow and the picture is cold. Desire sits in a formal, almost clinical light, without the gloss of softcore packaging. Anne van der Ven plays Wanda. André Arend van Noord plays Severin. The masochism and dominance between them rest on an understanding between adults.
The crew is small, and the pair keep the work in their own hands. Maartje Seyferth directs and edits. Victor Nieuwenhuijs directs and shoots. Peter Gray does the lighting. Sound is Peter Burghout and Volfango Pecoraio. Herbert van Drongelen also edits. It is not a studio package, and the film has one author’s weather because of that.
Venus in Furs played theatrically in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. International sales went through REEL SUSPECTS. DVD editions followed in the Netherlands, Germany, France, England, and Japan. At the International Film Festival of St. Petersburg in Russia it was awarded for Creative Quest and True Professional Properties. The festival treated this Sacher-Masoch adaptation as serious craft, not a one-off novelty.
