La venus negra

My review was written in June 1984 after watching the movie on VHS screener copy.

"Black Venus" is a classy-looking sex romance made last fall as an indie feature and already played off by its co-financer, The Playboy Channel pay-cabler. A throwback to the type of undressed period films that flourished before hardcore porn hurt softcore films at the box office, pic has further potential in the home video market.

Screenplay by exec producer Harry Alan Towers (writing under his nom de film of Peter Welbeck) adapts a Balzac story about Venus (Josephine Jacqueline Jones), a beautiful model-cum-prostitute from Martinique who lives in Paris in the 19th century. She entrances a struggling young sculptor Armand (Jose Antonio Ceinos), who creates a striking full-figure art work of her called Black Venus.

As Venus moves up in local society, modeling for dress shop owner Madame Jean (Helga Line) and shacking up as a companion to rich bisexual Madame Marie (Karin Schubert), Armand slips into a depression, unable to tolerate Venus' earning money to support them, either legitimately or by prostitution.

She later falls in love with a 17-year-old country girl in Paris, Louise (Florence Guerin) and duo seem to be living happily ever after at a Spanish villa of a fatherly art collector Jacques (Emiliano Redondo). Unfortunately, Jacques has stolen the Black Venus statue and Armand comes a-hunting, leading to a tragic conclusion.

Old-fashioned tale ironically is gussied up with handsome costumes, though its raison d'etre is obviously to have attractive women disrobe for the voyeur trade. Madrid-lensed settings are attractive, though a low-budget is evidenced by repetitive shots of an all-purpose single-street locale.

The post-synched English language dialog is well-synched to actors articulating in English, but has that artificial, disembodied ring that is not up to domestic theatrical release standards. French helmer Claude Mulot, who made a stylish horror film starring Anny Duperey in 1969, "Blood Rose", does an okay job.

In the title role, statuesque (literally) and toothy Jones is a real looker in the Jayne Kennedy vein, though her acting ability is not demonstrated here. Vet Karin Schubert (who had a key role in the 1972 "Bluebeard" starring Richard Burton) has become a striking-looking mature actress, as has Spanish thesp Helga Line, while Florence Guerin is a most alluring young French thesp. Actress Mandy Rice-Davies (of Profumo scandal notoriety two decades ago) is wasted in a minor role as a brothel keeper.

NOTE in 2023: My review above is reprinted exactly as it was published in 1984. I was oddly prescient in comparing star Jones (real name: Lolita Armbrister, a former Miss Bahamas beauty contest winner) to Jayne Kennedy - Leon Isaac Kennedy had divorced Jayne Kennedy in 1982 but ended up marrying Ms. Jones/Armbrister in 1995! Other than the fact both Leon and I were born in Cleveland, and that both his wives were beauty contest winners, I have no idea how or why we have this similar reaction to feminine beauty.

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

Back in the 1980s, regional cable providers like PRISM, Wometco Home Theatre, and SelecTV would air unrated soft core movies (no male full frontal, simulated sex) late on Friday and Saturday nights. Most were foreign productions from the previous decade, either British Benny-Hillesque sex comedies or badly dubbed Continental flicks that were the last gasps of non-government funded European cinema. Some of the movies were English language costume dramas that had scripts with actual plots and classical scores, shot on real locations with good lighting and real direction. Examples of these movies included 1985's "Nana", 1977's "Vanessa", and 1983's "Black Venus." French director Claude Mulot helmed this retelling of a Balzac-inspired tale of a struggling sculptor obsessed with a beautiful Caribbean muse in late 19th century Paris. 1979's Miss Bahamas Lolita Armbrister appears as the title character under the name Josephine Jacqueline Jones. Spanish actor Jose Antonio Ceinos plays Armand, the young sculptor introduced to Venus at a party by his patron Jacque (Emiliano Redondo) who also narrates the movie in voice over. Armand invites Venus home where he sculpts her, falls in love with her, and beds her. Armand's pride is his weakness, and when Venus tries to become a dress model to help pay Armand's rent he casts her out on the street. Venus is forced to survive by sleeping around, eventually ending up in a brothel. Armand finds he is unable to shake her memory, and unsuccessfully tries to find refuge in the bottom of a bottle.

Mulot must have had a real budget to work with because it's all up on the screen; sumptuous gowns, top hats and tuxedos with tails, manor houses, cobblestone streets, carriages, ballroom dancing, a classy sounding score, and a bevy of beautiful unclothed females. Jones shows off her achingly beautiful body several times, and virtually all of the women in the cast strip naked at one time or another. Look for 1963's British sex scandal icon Mandy Rice Davies as one of Venus's benefactors. Mulot uses the camera and the storyline to spice up the sex scenes much more than the expected contorted positions and exaggerated huffing-and-puffing. His choice of a character's voice-over works quite well to move "Black Venus" along for its 80-minute running time.

In the 1990s national cable channels like Cinemax and Showtime began producing their own softcore programming (the ubiquitous "cable porn" of today) and the Euro softcore movies were tossed by the wayside. "Black Venus" was available only as a bootleg on ebay or as a previously viewed rental at flea markets, and the bottom of bargain bins for years. It finally got released on DVD in late 2006. As an example of what softcore porn can aspire to and be in an age of Skinemax flicks set in the same Pasadena neighborhoods using the same 30 actors, it's well worth checking out.

There cannot be a spoilers mention for this film as there's really not much to it. The first scene tells you what the backstory is. A sculptor is madly in love with a black girl named Venus, who becomes his muse and soon, leaves him penniless. That's the most amount of plot and character development you'll ever see.

This is an erotica. There's plenty of nudity and some softcore level humping in the film but what bothers the most is when the narrator, a wealthy art collector finally takes home the Black Venus, filmmaker Claude Mulot seems to have had cold feet and lets his female lead "stay moral", thereby even if our narrator owns the Black Venus, he does not own the muse. This kind of poetic justice seems rather odd for a film with gratuitous sex. It's kinda like asking "What's another sex scene in an erotica?"

There's literally nothing else for you to look forward to. The acting is third-class, the production design seems to have been borrowed from Merchant-Ivory and it's as if the production always never had enough lights. Every shot feels dark and gloomy, and hence is apt for nighttime viewing only. Given its subject matter, that's a good choice. Cinemax, with its modern filmmaking techniques and better looking girls, is a better choice for you boys.

I'd give this 4/10 mainly because it lacks sex scenes where it was most necessary. You've got to close the arc, Claude!!

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.