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You'd be hard pressed to imagine a more seemingly perfect match of director and material than Roman Polanski and "Venus in Fur." Too bad it isn't a wickeder, subtler, more imaginative movie.

Of all Polanski's latter-day chamber pieces... this is the liveliest: taut, witty and, while very much a male film, nevertheless a sly dismantling of the sexual politics of performance. But it's weirdly striking just how much Amalric, playing Thomas like a man in a permanent state of advanced little-boy terror, resembles the director in his youth. You can't help speculating on who, in this particular showbiz household, wears the shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather.

This is Polanski's most simple and unalloyed film, a joyous two-hander and as near to a comedy as Polanski has ever been – bearing in mind his customary attraction to discomfort, panic and a nagging imminence of the sinister.

This verbose film goes into some detail about the antiquated politics of the text, and it's Polanski's lithe presentation of the material that helps retain interest in the dense chatter. Words and subtext overlap, as do the psychological boundaries between the actors and their characters... Though lively to a tee, the characters slowly (and sadly) evolve into ribald ciphers, and the natty sense of humour brings back bad memories of the director at his worst (Cul-De-Sac and What?)

Polanski's Venus in Fur is neither profound nor erotic (at least not for this viewer) but it is wonderfully witty and a generous gift from the director to his two stars. Seigner has the more difficult role—Vanda is written in extremely broad strokes—and if she begins shakily, she eventually finds a place of truth and power. Amalric, as usual, underplays magnificently, even in the gender-fuck finale where he transforms, not into Vanda, per the script, but into Polanski in The Tenant.

Some may think that the final scene goes too far, gilding the lily in its explicitness. I disagree; Vanda could be misconstrued as a natural manipulator, which is precisely the anti-feminist (and, well, misogynist) ideology Venus In Fur seeks to unwrite. The female of the species is not deadlier than the male -- no more bullshit. Rather, she's really tired of being messed with. Polanski, for all his faults, is to be admired for giving Vanda / Seigner her victory dance.

Departing from that film's static, often pedestrian setups, here Polanski goes wild, multiplying the confusion with weird compositions as these two clashing personalities repeatedly fuse and break apart... It's the sort of surreal touch that pushed the director's early work toward such a specific nexus of humor and horror, a sense that fleetingly returns here, in a film that feels maniacally inspired by the joys of perversity.

That final-act indignity is a joke, tying in with Thomas' early assertion to the fiancée that he'd make a better Vanda than most of the bimbos he's been seeing ("Just put me in a dress and a pair of stockings…"). Maybe the whole thing should be viewed as a joke, a civilised entertainment for theatre (and film) audiences without any pretensions to profundity – though I still found the acting too mannered, and the dialogue too contrived. Venus in Fur is impressive but dead...

...Seigner not only steals the show, literally in the context of the film's narrative, but proves an ample embodiment of the many attitudes towards carnality surveyed in the film, even as the movie devolves into a parade of developments that prove a little too overdone and schematic. The film's overarching style is too beholden to the material's origins to really benefit from the influence of its director, though his mastery of conversations remains.

[Venus in Fur] is a perverse funhouse of a movie, in which identities get pulverized and sexual power play never ceases: "Dutchman" by way of "Vanya on 42nd Street." It's the work of a master dabbling in small pieces rather than epic ones, and putting all touches into perfect place without so much as glancing at his canvas.

What's most impressive is the speed and dexterity with which Seigner, who stank up Polanski's Frantic a quarter-century ago, moves back and forth between the multiple personae this role provides/demands. If you stay married to a world-class director long enough, and keep being cast in his films, I guess you eventually learn how to act.

In the end, the biggest seduction of all is over us. It's how Polanski's film trancends those four walls and its inherent talkiness, by throwing its ideas out to us as a challenge. Our worries are strong early on. Is this just a dry academic exercise? Is Seigner right for the role? Do we want to be stuck inside a theatre for an entire film? As the actors move fluidly between various states, shedding one skin while assuming another, Polanski makes this subversive parlour game matter.