Dangerous Beauty Review

Title: Dangerous Beauty

Year: 1998

Director:  Marshall Herskovitz

Main Actors: Catherine McCormack, Rufus Sewell, and Oliver Platt

 Dangerous Beauty is a movie about a Venetian Courtesan during the 16^th century.   During this time period, Courtesan’s were treated differently from other women.  They were allowed to read and write poetry, they were allowed to be at functions and upstage men all for good fun; however, that does not necessarily mean that they were free or respected.  Courtesan’s lived a lavish live of luxuries and wealth, but it always comes at a cost.  Dangerous Beauty examines the freedoms and the restraints, the love and the forced intercourse, and the will to save one’s country, and how people repay Veronica, the heroine, when the time comes.

Veronica Franco is just an average woman in Venice.  She has fallen in love with a man, Marco Venier, and despite their desire to be with one another, he is bred above her; thus the marriage is not permitted by his family.  He marries a woman he has no desire to lay with, and Veronica takes on, after much refusal, her mother’s trade, a courtesan.  Being a courtesan is neither an easy nor a fun task to learn.  She must become well-versed in poems and be able to create her own, she must learn how to walk seductively and she must learn to keep her distance from her clients.    

The life of a courtesan appears to be one that has more freedom than the average woman of Venice. “Courtesans, my dear, are the most educated women in the world.” While others are not allowed to read, courtesans are often the most knowledgeable women in the country.   (Quote from the movie from IMDb)  An average woman is tied to her husband and cannot do anything without his approval.   

A woman, Beatrice, a friend of Veronica’s before Veronica became a courtesan, shows the difference between the two women.  Beatrice followed all of the proper rules for women at the time.  She did her needlepoint, married, had children, but was unhappy.  In fact, she wants Veronica to raise her child, a girl, to be a courtesan because maybe then her child will be happy.  However, despite the looks of freedom, Veronica is still in a cage, one in which she must obey men also.   She was forced to sleep with men because others wanted her too.  Veronica tells Beatrice, “my cage seems bigger than yours, but it’s still a cage.”  The look of freedom exists, but that does not mean that freedom is there.

Veronica is torn between love and duty.  The man she loves would not marry her because she could not produce a sizable dowry, so he left and married a woman he did not love.  She turned to becoming a courtesan.  In the end though, love brought them together, but neither could forget their duties.  Even when Veronica was ready to quit because she found love, the doge called upon her, forced her to sleep with the King of France so that the country receives the aid it needs to fight a war with Turkey.   She was forced to forfeit her love for the sake of her country.  She was a national asset, but as with everything, it forsook true love and it drew the boundaries of the cage in which she was trapped.

Finally, one of the biggest things that I took away from this movie regards human nature.  In the movie, the Inquisition comes to Venice and wants to charge Veronica with witchcraft.  Despite all the things she had done for the country and many of the men, whom she knew very well, in that room, they would not stand up for her.  They would have let her die.  It was not until her true love stood up for her  that several other men stood up.  But it is a good indicator of human nature: no matter what one does for another, there is no guarantee the other person will stand up in your time of need.   It is amazing to see, because we can see it in our lives now, how people are willing to let others fall, to protect themselves rather than stand up for what is right.

Overall, Dangerous Beauty is a look into what life was like for Venetian women during the 16^th century.  Women were expected to obey, whether courtesan or housewife, and each was placed in a form of a cage.  The only difference was the size of the cage.   It reflects that society was looking for different things from different women, but no matter which life a woman chose she was still bound by certain rules put in place by men.  It also accurately reflects human nature.  None of the men wanted to stand up and admit they had slept with Veronica, though most had, even if it would save her life.  Despite all the things she had done for her country and for each of those men individually, they were willing to sit quietly, if they could, and let things pass.