User Reviews

This film is NOT for the faint of heart. Nothing is censored, just the bare naked (literally) truth. Black Venus tells the true story of Sarah (Baptized name) Baartman, a South African woman of Khoisan descent who in the early 19th century was led on false pretenses of fame and fortune to England only to be exploited for her body.

I watched this film with a basic understanding of Sarah's biography. With this in mind, I am a little surprised that the film didn't get a higher rating. Yes, it is difficult to watch. Yes, it shows exploitation and abuse at its finest (if that's even the correct word to use here). Yes, there is shocking and pornographic scenes that are not suitable for the faint of heart. Yes, you will be disgusted.

But you should be. This is a very accurate portrayal of what happened to the true "Venus of Hottentot." She was exploited for her body, people paid to touch her buttocks and her genitalia was a matter of scientific intrigue. This movie is not a pleasant watch, but the topic itself is not a pleasant truth. This is a dark side of history that is difficult to explore, and the director and the main actress do a wonderful job of portraying it as such.

History buffs, this film is for you - especially if you are interested in African/Women's history. For the faint of heart, avoid this film - and for the curious, make sure you know fully well what you're getting into.

This movie should be half an hour. There are same scenes over and over. Okey we got it that the woman is suffering under a very horribble man but we do not know what she thinks . She keeps her silent thorough the movie.

The storytelling is not sufficient altough the subject is perfect.

Anyway i am very sorry for that woman and shame on those white people so called "the founder of modern world"

I finally watched this movie earlier today with a sorrowful heart after first hearing about it a couple of years ago. hard to get it here in Indonesia on DVD, finally got it on two split You Tube downloads.

Yes this is not a film for the faint hearted, it is extremely graphic and harsh in its direction to say the least and certainly long at 2 hours 40 minutes (comparable with the Hobbit which I saw on new Years Eve).

The film is an artistic portrayal of a dignified South African tribal woman who is abused and misled once she arrives first to England and then later to Paris. However, it lacks artistic direction and balance. Not a contradiction in terms exactly.

for example, the opening scene shows her being exhibited in a medical seminar and the end of the movie displays her physical remains which would later be put in a Paris Musueum. My point is that the Director could have taken more attention to detail and put the lady into a greater prospective, perhaps a prequel to the main part of the story (the recent Johnny Depp movie 'Dark shadows" a case in point) showing the lady in her tribal land and how she met the Doctor before arriving to England. The explanation in the movie is all too bland and passed over for the most part. The same applied for the ending although there were some explanatory subtitles and compensating visual glimpses of when she was returned to South Africa.

What we see in this film is no different from what still goes on in our world today but in a different way. We go-global in order to see the very thing that this humble woman was subjected to and we pay to see it, sometimes on the internet - animals as well as humans - and it is only perhaps in western countries that there are anti-voice against the abuse in circuses.

We should watch this film and want to be shocked. Unlike the spectators shown throughout the film, we have the benefit of a greater education and enhanced knowledge but abuse such as Saartje Baartman is shown to endure in the movie, goes on to this day.

There was a lack of cohesion at times in the transition from going London to Paris and then later when Saartje found herself in the Brothels. Yes, she drank and smoked and was inevitably sensitive and temperamental given her real life role play but this is indeed an extraordinary film about an extraordinary woman who is extraordinary for her courage and determination and not so unordinary from any other woman except for her buttocks and her labia, according to the medical scientists.

I certainly enjoyed this film more than the "Hobbit' which bored the pants off me (except for the special effects) and yes 'Venus Noire' is slow and often repetitive but I can share empathy with the Director and in an unkind, cruel, uncomfortable way, this is entertainment.

On a general note, there is no swearing or offensive violence, despite the harsh treatment Saartje Baartman endured while away from South Africa. Yes, she is mostly naked for large sections of the film and there are a couple of later scenes in Paris where she is in a sexual situation but apart from that, this is not a film for a sexual voyeur and don't expect to see flashes of an unusually large labia because you will not.

The standard of acting in this film is excellent. I may be wrong here but this is a French film and so good sub-titles in English or language of your choice are important. I suggest that there are a lot of other movies out there who will shock and offend you a whole lot more than this one.

Was this film 3 hours long or fourteen? Kechiche takes us across borders (Africa / Europe, Dead / Living, Savage / Civilized) in a movie that has the gravitas and sensual weight of a kind of stations of the cross. The "Venus" is our Christ, suffering for and as the direct result of our sins, chief among those the blindness we call racism. Potently, even explosively mixed with virulent sexism, racism shapes the ever more horrible experience of the film's subject, as she is reduced (figuratively and then literally) to an object. The film is gorgeous, infinitely wise about the costs of being marked (trapped in the legibly different body), smart about the role that money plays in the ongoing betrayal (if Judas saw this film he'd really feel rooked: the point is not to sell out Christ, the point is how many times you can--for an increasing price--take trust to market), and worth every minute of horrified attention. Then--you ask-- why an "8"? Of course we are (as the film is eager to point out), as spectators, aligned with all those who want to look at this...complicated site of excitements--but we are also (in tight close-up for the tears that always start in Yahima Torres' left eye) vaguely miserable with her (growling at the end of a chain is okay, being touched is--at first--not) and then...nowhere. Who was she? What did she (aside from bright red leather gloves and a tres joli hat) want? There's something about this film, in other words, that seems just about as hard and cold and stiff as the plaster cast of the Hottentot, which seems always just on the verge of coming to life.

It is impossible to rate this film because it is about the subject inexplicably painful and graphic, and still absolutely worth seeing, no matter how difficult it is. It is about sexualized racism. And it says a lot about white man and a white Europe. We still live in that world. This film make people think. I cannot recommend it to anyone sensitive, still I have to praise the director and the lead actress. Knowing that Abdelativ Kechiche made also two other great movies, Kus-kus and Blue is the warmest color, I understand his poetics, and this film falls in that category of his great films as well.

Of course, from the first minute of the movie, we know how a black African woman will be treated in white Europe 100 years ago, just probably, especially if we are from white Europe, we did not have a clue about the extent and details of how racist gender abuse looks like, and what is the link to the presence. Now we know, and we cannot pretend that we haven't seen this film.

Pros: A very important tale worth telling.

A true depiction of a strong black woman, who did what she had to do to survive.

I saw the story as a metaphor for how every European country took advantage of the continent of Africa.

Cons: I hate the fact that what took place in the film, happened to many people of African descent.

excerpt, full review at my location - While some will attest that the armless Venus De Milo is a work of art, actual physical faults are treated with considerably less vigour – even when they're a result of nature itself. The Venus in Abdellatif Kechiche's biographical drama never comes close to attaining the stature of a God, but nevertheless provides the basis for a fascinating meditation on how one can be judged by the sum of their apparent parts.

The film's value lies in its ability to interconnect human sciences with medical science, genuinely accessible as an historical biopic of sorts, but never exclusively tied to a timeline. In avoiding becoming too self- righteous towards his subject, Kechiche achieves a lot with his ambitiously-scoped examination of cultural ignorance, and integrates conventional biopic stamps into his outlandish topic. Even if a chunk of Black Venus could acceptably be consigned to the cutting room floor, it's difficult to condemn its unrelenting vision, and the level of interest in its unique appeal makes for a thoroughly worthwhile experience.

it is not only the pain of lead character but , in a special form, the pain of viewer. because not only racism and exploitation of a woman vulnerability are the subjects but large manner to discover, in each period, in each society, the other, the stranger, the strange, the exotic victim who inspire fake feeling of power. it is the film of an admirable actress and a necessary lesson about sins who are not absolved. it is a kind of mirror. more than touching, it is terrible. more than terrible it is honest image of a circle. and , maybe, image of a sacrifice who has as axis the force of silence. a powerful message. reflection of profound pain. that is all. and the image of a human been as ordinary tool.

This is the story of the black woman in the early 1800s, shown on cheap varieties as the so called Hottentott Venus. She behaves like an animal, is treated on stage as an animal and is regarded as such by the rude audiences.

She isn't a slave. Not technically, but the agreement with her employer is of course on his terms. There are also other forms of performances. This woman also acts in front of Parisian high society and not at least in front of the scientists of the time, who find resemblances with the orangutan.

What her employers is exploiting is not just this woman; they also exploit racism and the different kind of audiences let their racism be exploited. There are of course money to be made from prejudices. 200 years ago and now. This our lesson.

While you watch it, this movie will seem too slow, and repetitive. Then you will walk out of the movie theater and start thinking about it: was it too slow to voluntarily short circuit your movie consumer's habits ? was the repetitiousness not unlike some kind of minimalistic serial music? The next day, you will not have completely forgotten the movie, the same way you have completely forgotten the movie you saw the week before. Then, little by little, in the face of the harshness, inhumanity and sheer jungleness of the everyday world, you will think back on Venus noire, on how this movie is a kind of allegory for man's difficulty to care for others. Actually, the repetitiousness of the movie will seem to you not unlike the repetitiousness of man's constant recourse to the "master and slave" scenario to get ahead in life; and the slowness will seem to you not unlike the incredible length of time man is taking to try out some new kinder, less individualistic, more humane scenario which would not only help "the master/s" get ahead. The epilogue images are all about mankind being somehow, sometimes capable of forfeiting its "master and slave" compulsion. Thank you art for reminding us we are capable of that !

Toe-curlingly painful to watch exploitation and dehumanisation of a native South African woman at the start of the 19th century.

A true story that needs to be told and taught.

This film exuberantly participates in the very abuse it purports to critique, debasing its actors, it audience, and most unforgivably, its subject. There is but one well-composed shot--of Saartjie and a journalist departing in a carriage--otherwise it is chock-full of lazily composed close ups of repulsive people doing repulsive things to an inscrutable, and hence utterly unknowable, totally cardboard, victim--one who can drink, smoke, cry, cough, yes, but what the hell is she thinking?! The director lets us in on nothing--she remains silent, acted upon, never reacting much less actually taking action! The one time in the screenplay that she resists unwelcome scrutiny, her decision is rendered incomprehensible by all the other exploitative events in the lamentable tale--based loosely, very, very, loosely, upon a true life-story. And sorry, but there is absolutely no need to cheapen the depth of the real woman's tragedy by all too simplistically literalizing (the totally un- historical) prostitution of Saartjie Baartman (note: I do not believe this is in any way a spoiler). Wow, I have never hated a movie this much--and I had high expectations because of thefascinating subject and because I very much enjoyed the filmmaker's "secret in the grain" (but for the indulgently long belly- dance) and "the games of love and chance"...but this one is hideously, monstrously, unforgivably, exploitative of a woman who has already suffered enough.

Unless you are as perverted as the Marquis de Sade, you probably will not enjoy this movie. It about is the enslavement and degradation of a Hottentot woman, exploited as a sexual freak. It gets worse and worse and worse ending with her a streetwalker with VD and TB, dying alone. The DVD was behind the counter at the library, for good reason I discovered. I had to turn the DVD machine off several times. I kept hoping somehow fortunes would change for her, or at least some revenge. The movie was simultaneously degrading for the character, and for the actor Yahima Torres who played Saartjie Baartman. I could not believe a modern actress would willing play such a degrading role. She must have been tricked or bullied into it. It is one of the most depressing movies ever made. It leaves you feeling filthy to the core. It is a soft porn movie, but it is much dirtier and disgusting than any hard-core porn movie you would have seen.

More modern nonsense meant to portray Caucasians as inherently evil monsters. In 1808, African Blacks were common in England and France, and would not have been viewed as "exotics" as the makers of this "history" piece will have one believe. Blatant racism is on display, but it is in the writing of the script, and the minds of the director and producers. Don't waste your time watching this rubbish when you can get all the CRT you need watching Sport Center on ESPN.

one of films who impress for its message. because it is not exactly a film about racism, prejudices, past or steps of science but about the other's position in society.honest.about cold. a black woman and her shows. the freedom as convention. the show and its nuances. a film who propose not a solution or sides of hidden events. only a start point for understand the manner to use the people as objects. and the complicity of the society to this cruel game.so, the virtue of the film is to reflect a ball of attitudes about the people. the selfish, the cruelty, the greed. who are parts of human nature. the axis of this delicate construction - the performance of Yahima Torres. the pillars - the music, dialogues and the air of the different scenes who becomes almost perceived by viewer. a film who could be useful. not only as historical testimony but as demonstration of a strange form of profound sin .