Venus: Let’s Talk About Sex
| Year: | 2016 |
| Production Co: | House of Real |
| Director: | Mette Carla Albrechtsen/Lea Glob |
There was no chance I wouldn't watch this documentary, being as it was about young women talking about sex and their bodies, but I didn't expect it to be really very interesting – and it wasn't.
A female Danish filmmaker and her sound person invite one young Copenhagen woman after another – all of them different shapes, sizes, sexualities, backgrounds and outlooks – into their sparsely furnished apartment and ask them a raft of questions about their experience, fantasies and desires.
As you'd expect from real life, you get a huge range of responses that show the psychological diversity of the human species, but if you really need to watch and 80 minute documentary to realise that, you're way too far behind the curve to appreciate a film like this anyway.
If you're a man like me or just find the female form aesthetically beautiful, the saving grace is that the director/s have their interviewees get naked and parade themselves before the camera for a minute or so each, so if you've found any of the ladies who appear particularly attractive, at least you get to see them in the altogether.
The only thing I'm still not sure of was the framing device. I thought it was just two filmmakers inviting women to talk about sex, but in all the synopses and descriptions I've read about it, there's a conceit that they're making an erotic film and the interviews are part of the casting process, but they find the spotlight turned on their own prejudices and assumptions by the range of responses they get.
I'm still not sure if I have the intent right – and as a consequences – I'm not sure if the whole thing's fictional, the characters portrayed by actresses, but at the chance of seeing a dozen or so young Danish women get undressed, does it really matter?

