GODDESS OF LOVE
US/Canada, 2015, 93 minutes, Colour.
Alexis Kendra, Woody Naismith.
Directed by Jon Knautz.
This is a psychological drama, growing ever more intense.
The initial focus is on Venus, alone, behaving oddly, the audience wondering what is going on in her mind. She is an exotic dancer at a strip club and gets advice from a fellow dancer, especially how to fascinate men. This she does as she dances, focusing particularly on an expatriate Australian photographer, Brian, who explains that his wife is dead, later he explains that she killed herself. They have a meal together, talk, go to his place and begin an affair.
Venus seems to be more normal as the affair progresses. Brian continues his work as a photographer, sometimes taking photos of Venus. She also sees a photo for his exhibition, of a friend who lives in the city, Clare. When he is busy at work, Venus texts him continuously, then decides to follow him, seeing him have a meal with Claire.
Her hallucinations become more intense, Claire visiting her to return clothes and Venus spitting on her face. Brian breaks off the relationship. She fantasises more and more, erotically, savagely.
She returns to her dancing, gets advice from the fellow dancers, but becomes more and more suspicious of Claire and Brian, feeling that Claire has followed her on the way out into the desert, Venus stopping and attacking her. She also fantasises that Brian has come back to her.
Ultimately, we see Venus, looking particularly ordinary after all the make-up and glamour, talking with a psychiatrist with Claire present who claims she has never met her. Gradually, Venus comes to realise that most things have been happening in her hallucinations, even a sexual relationship with Brian.
However, there is a flashback where she has savagely killed Brian.
The film is a portrait, psychiatric, of a needy woman, caught up in a secular world, not trusting her emotions, letting them get the better of her, feeling some kind of security until she feels betrayed and then, in her imagination and in fact she lashes out.
The screenplay was cowritten by the star, Alexis Kendra, with the director, Jon Knautz. Woody Naismith is the grandson of the distinguished English actor, Lawrence Naismith.
