Verführung: die grausame Frau

A very stylish German film about a Hamburg art gallery owner and S&M domina who is giving "performances" with her slaves and maids in front of a selling audience. Unfortunately her favorite slave is falling in love with her. This movie, directed by two women, is an interesting and inspiring study about fatal love, sex, dependence, seduction and sensibility.

There are not many dialogues and much action involved, but many silent sequences and erotic moments that are standing on their own. The colors, settings and photography are lush and stimulating and sometimes appear like an MTV video clip setting of a 1980's Duran Duran, George Michael or Madonna pop song. There are also many literature influences involved. Based on the Leopold von Sacher-Masoch drama "Venus in Furs", there are also scenes or names taken from Marquis de Sade's "Justine" and "The 120 days of Sodom" and Octave Mirbeau's "The garden of delight".

As the directors try to give different view points from the domina, her maid and two slaves, the story is a bit difficult to follow sometimes, and in some moments because of the lack of any tempo simply boring. But at least this movie could have been an important influence on Adrian Lyne's box selling hit "9 1/2 weeks" which was produced one year later.

For the movie buffs amongst you: the dialogue coach of this production was Sandra Nettelbeck, later becoming a movie director ("Drei Sterne"). The stylish settings were produced by Xenia Katzenstein who was playing "Frau Sommer" in a well-know German TV coffee advert series in the seventies ("Jacobs Kroenung") - a rather conservative role model. Unbelievable but true.

In the long history of cinema, probably more than one hundred thousand movies have been made. Of these, there are surely many thousands of clunkers. This one belongs somewhere near the very bottom of the list of clunkers. It is supposed to be about sado-masochism, but the director is apparently the sadist here and the audience the masochists. This film does not even have any titillating value; it's all talk - long, dull conversations. It is very poorly lit, with most of the scenes shot in dark, dingy rooms. The dominatrix is played by Grossman, a German actress who looks like a cross between Patricia Neal and Boy George, with shades of Sean Young.

The only reason I tracked down this movie is because of Udo Kier... And I have to say, he's done some really really bizarre roles... Including this one...

All the women in the movie look like men, or sound like them... So it's pretty funny. But the movies not funny, not really. Except the guy who wants Mistress to use him 'as a toilet' hahaha.

The movie is bizarre.. it's haunting. The colors are.. I don't know, it just adds to the weirdness. The ending sort of left you hanging, but I did watch it again before I commented here, and I guess it ended at a nice place.

Udo Kier. Any movie with Udo, I can't leave a bad comment... lol. He talks German all through the movie, which I like... he has the BEST voice in the world... He's mistreated in the movie by, Wanda, the Mistress who owns the 'GALLERY', and it's sad! He did good in his role, I guess, he never gave any expression, or anything...

It's not the type of movie I'd watch at a party or anything, but it's definately not the worst I've ever seen...