We are in Paris in 1817, in the Royal Academy of Medicine where the body of Saartijie Baartman, a real-life woman who had been purchased as a slave, reduced to a freak and the object of exploitation in the homes of wealthy Parisian well-wishers, then prostituted and subjected to scientific research, is being researched.

The black venus is exhibited as a trained animal, touched and ridden without shame, whipped and sacrificed to a morbid eroticism absolutely far from her intimate nature.

She the "Hottentot Venus," particularly sought after for her ape-like features and such exuberant private parts.

An object par excellence, as the woman's body often is, in a shock film from which one cannot help but be disturbed, hurt.

"The film is inevitably a reflection on the viewer's gaze, on the fact that we are all urged, even by politics, to look a certain way at what we have around us," Kechiche argues

A cruel and near-perfect film, in its setting, costumes, performances, timing, and ability to engage the subject matter in an exemplary way.

Her abused body was on display at the Museum of Man in Paris until 1974; in 2002 South Africa demanded the return of this martyr to whom this film pays some recognition.

160 minutes of great cinema. A film to be dedicated to.

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice