“Everyone sees the silver Venus with her wings. But she stares at the horizon, as if all the doors were opening before her.” The statuette that adorns the hoods of Rolls Royces gives the title to the film that has won the jackpot at the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Festival 2024, and serves as a metaphor for the ambitions of its protagonist, a young woman who puts all her effort into escaping from a suffocating prison of life and making her way in the no less oppressive world of finance. In a relevant scene of the film, Jeanne has managed to stick her foot in a door that was closing, and has slipped in where no one wanted her: from the passenger seat, she looks out the window at the streets of the most luxurious neighborhoods of Paris, while listening to the life lessons of the big boss from the investment bank where he began working.
“Everyone sees the silver Venus with her wings. But she stares at the horizon, as if all the doors were opening in front of her,” says the unscrupulous mentor, hair covered in hair gel, luxury clothes and watch, steering wheel of a Rolls Royce in his hands. And, at this key moment, we have already learned who Jeanne is, where she comes from and where she is going (or wants to go): if her B side, a prodigious brain for codes and algorithms, privileged vision of the movements of money, presents us with a calculating character of robotic coldness, someone extraordinarily sure of himself, and who has things very clear. On the A side, on the contrary, fragility and vulnerability rule, silences and probable traumas. And care, playing the role of the mysteriously absent mother with her two younger brothers, also managing the apathy of the father, a gendarme with a very dark personality.
In a way, throwing oneself into a cosmos where scruples are left at the door (“business is like judo, the key is to use the power of the adversary against him. Don’t ruin a nice story with the truth,” another piece of advice from the fucking boss of the company), also supposes the escape forward of a protagonist who goes from cage to cage, and who will find it difficult to free herself from the chains of poverty, wherever they make her prisoner. The Silver Venus It shows us two universes that are so masculinized, patriarchal, decidedly sexist, Like a gendarmerie barracks (a small planet where policemen and soldiers live, silenced women and children going to school passing by uniformed young people singing La Marseillaise) and the world of finance and investment banks: Jeanne wants to get out of the fire, even if it means heading towards the embers.
Many things in one
The second film by French filmmaker Héléna Klotz (The Atomic Age) It is many things in one: a social drama marked by determinism and class consciousness (“we are told that we can change the world, but we are born and die in the same place”), a character study, a portrait of the wild jungle of the world of finance and, in general, of the world of work, or a reflection on youthful angst, patriarchy, consent and gender identity, with a protagonist of androgynous appearance, black hair to the boy, male suit. “I’m neutral, like numbers: is seven masculine or feminine?” she asks the alpha male who runs her new job when he asks her if this self-definition is “some woke shit.” Even, The Silver Venus It can be read as unusual coming-of-age, because Jeanne opens her eyes to the stillness and grows older while events continue to change around her.
The Silver Venus It navigates in viscerality, thrilling in its own way, with an immersive staging, visually overwhelming, aesthetically beautiful.
Claire Pommet, a superlative actress / Photo: Filmin Archive
With a starting point that is slightly reminiscent of that of Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987), The Silver Venus It navigates in viscerality, thrilling in its own way, with an immersive staging, visually overwhelming, aesthetically beautiful. And with a protagonist who eats up the screen: like Venus who stares at the horizon as if all the doors were opening in front of her, Claire Pommet’s first acting job (known for her role as an indie pop singer with the Pomme project) dazzles for the subtlety of small gestures and the mastery of the body, for a powerful look and presence, for the extremely complicated balance between the two sides of a character of enormous complexity. Her film debut should cause queues at the doors of her agent, because Claire Pommet is a superlative actress.
Her film debut should cause queues at the doors of her agent, because Claire Pommet is a superlative actress.
The final scene of The Silver Venus, almost a reflection of what we have already seen at the beginning of the film. It shows the restrained violence of job interviews (Héléna Klotz says that they are approached with the most brutal realism), by the way with a surprise appearance by Mathieu Amalric, finishing Jeanne’s journey in a magnificent way, making it clear to us that the protagonist’s adventure is a journey with no point of return.
