Dangerous Beauty (Ws) [DVD] [1999] [US Import]

I really don't know why this film has three titles! What I can tell you is that it is a beautifully produced picture of life in 16th Century Venice. If you love Venice you can't miss this! Especially if you love the "Carnivale" there because this is such a visual treat with masses of gorgeous frocks! On a more serious note it is also the almost true life story of the amazing Veronica Franco, a woman of talent, education and spirit who was a poetess and powerful courtesan. Her profession was not of her choice but rather expected of her because of her class and the joy of the story is that her constant love for one man was not impinged upon at all by the nature it, nor his for her.

The opening credits give a sunny, colourful picture of Venice of the time but I felt that the drama itself took a little time to warm up and for the characters to settle into their parts convincingly. Once it gets off the ground though it is memorable, with many fine cameo parts by a galaxy of good actors. The courtroom scene was full of suspense and made a riveting climax. Although Veronica is given the philosophy of a modern feminist to expound in this scene, one wonders if the real truth is that she inspired love in the hearts of so many of her admirers that she would have survived if she had said nothing at all!

I have been waiting for this on DVD for ages - but all those titles made it difficult to find! Must rush off and book a visit to Venice.....

This is a fantastic, passionate romp of a film. A great, sweeping swashbuckler of a romance - with a twist: the swashbuckler in question is a woman. A film for true romantics and lovers of good old fashioned adventure stories.

The central lead played by Catherine McCormack, is an extremely intelligent, brave beautiful young woman in renaissance Venice. Coerced into the role of Courtesan she plays the part with honour and independence of mind.

One of my top three films of last year (along with American Beauty and Saving Grace, for anyone who wants to know). Its just so DIFFERENT from the mindless violence type of adventure offered up by Hollywood. It has a real feel of fantastic early cinema - Imagine an Errol Flyn film blended with a great Katherine Hepburn movie and you'll have a pretty good idea of what you're in for.

This film claims it is a true story at the start, but it's a very dubious version of the real Veronica Franco's story. Despite that, however, it is a glorious romp of a movie, at least for the first two thirds. Filmed in a sort of golden 'Renaissance' light like Italian paintings come to life, it wallows in its own glorious decadence. The beautiful Veronica, unable to marry her love since her family can't afford a dowry, instead becomes a courtesan, trained by her mother, and rises in Venetian society. Full of seductive garden parties, Venetian salons, poetry competitions and the allure of sex, this part of the film works wonderfully.

The problem comes when the film attempts to deconstruct the glamorous side of being a courtesan, which is, after all, just a prostitute dressed up in beautiful clothes and accomplishments. Veronica's struggle, and her trial under the Venetian inquisition, takes the film into a darker arena that sits very uncomfortably with the first half. It's not well-written enough to really engage with this, and the Hollywood treatement of her release spoiled everything that had gone earlier.

The real Veronica Franco was far, far more fascinating than this film makes out, and didn't, of course, have the same kind of Hollywoood romantic gloss to her life. Rosenthal's The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-century Venice (Women in Culture & Society), the first full-length study of Franco in English, was cited as the base of this film. It's a proper academic study of her life and writings in their social, economic and historical context, and while it may be hard going for a non-academic reader, it still reveals a more complex mind and society than this film even tries to.

So overall I loved this film for its pure indulgence and beauty but felt uncomfortable when it tried to deal with anything darker or more realistic. Sadly there's a really good reason why this failed at the box-office despite the always-wonderful Rufus Sewell.

ps. Veronica Franco's poems and letters are available at a reasonable price on Amazon Poems and Selected Letters (Other Voice in Early Modern Europe) if you're interested in exploring the reality behind the fiction.