Written by Alexis Kendra and directed by Jon Knautz, Goddess of Love is a story about obsession, suspicion, addiction, and the most fatal of all — betrayal. Alexis Kendra also stars in this movie as the female lead, Venus. She is a stripper who is new to the world of stripteasing. Everything about this stripper screams sultry, scorned, and desperate for love.
Goddess of Love belongs to two genres. Erotic and psychological thriller because it has elements of both throughout the movie. The film starts as an erotica with Venus and Brian (Woody Naismith) meeting at the strip club, falling in love, and having passionate sex during the movie’s first half. The movie quickly transitions to a psychological thriller where Venus can be seen getting high and becoming delusional.
Although this transition isn’t smooth, the storyline is quite intriguing. The movie is bumpy and written a bit carelessly. However, the movie isn’t frivolous. It provides an interesting take on delusion and a woman’s inability to accept rejection. Goddess of Love will make its viewers question the actuality of the volatile chain of events that is shown from the female lead’s perspective.
Goddess of Love (2015): Plot Summary And Movie Synopsis:
We find out the minute we get introduced to Venus that she is not the usual girl-next-door type heroine. She is a soft yet sensuous stripper living in L.A. who falls in love with one of her customers, Brian, an Australian photographer. The male lead is mourning the death of his wife. It’s evident from the first scene that he isn’t over his wife’s death yet. Venus invites him over to take pictures of her. She wines and dines with him and slowly falls in love with him.
He tells her that she reminds him of his late wife. Venus is smitten by him. As their relationship progresses, the viewers witness their affair go from intense chemistry to one of them becoming distant. Brian is slowly losing interest. He acts aloof and isn’t interested in hanging out with Venus like before. After listening to one of his voicemails, she suspects him of having an affair.
After a lot of deliberation, she confronts him, and he says that it’s his late wife’s best friend and she just wants to meet him. Venus isn’t quite satisfied with that explanation. So, she follows him to a restaurant where she finds out about another woman. He seems happy with this new woman and breaks it off with Venus.
What happens to Venus after the breakup?
What happens when a woman’s love is shunned, easily replaced, and humiliated? She descends into madness. Sitting in her bathtub, Venus drinks copious amounts of wine as she slowly loses her sanity. She is afflicted with jealousy and experiences hallucinations. Venus was once a woman who loved to play piano. She was a poised woman who took ballet classes. But when her love is thrown away, she devolves into chaos and violence.
Goddess of LoveWhen Brian is photographing her for the second time, she is seen wearing a mask. He tells her, “Let’s lose the mask.” That’s when the audience gets to see her real nature. She is becoming unhinged. She suffers from bipolar disorder, and her delusions result from that disorder. She sees a snake hissing and crawling toward her. Another allegory is for Brian turning out to be a liar and cheater.
Whenever she hears the neighbors playing music, she smokes a pipeful of marijuana. Is it the neighbors playing the music, or is it her mind going bonkers? Probably both. Perhaps the latter. It’s for the viewers to decide. Venus’ character quickly loses her balance. Her deranged behavior makes her scribble notes on Brian’s car.
Goddess of Love Ending Explained:
Things turn unsettling when Brian’s new rendezvous comes to light. Venus loses her sanity, and her hallucinations get out of hand. During one of her mental breakdowns, she attempts to choke her stripper friend to death, who was trying to help her come out of her breakup. The last fifteen minutes of the movie is where things get really interesting.
During the entirety of this movie, you can’t really accept Venus’ point of view because one doesn’t know how to trust a delusional woman. But the last fifteen minutes clear it all for the viewers. She is seen sitting with a doctor who asks her what happened to Brian. When she says she doesn’t know, he tells her that she last visited him at his apartment. He unravels a few pictures which stun the viewers. He is photographed in his closet. He is dead, with blood oozing out of his forehead.
Is this another allegory for his love of taking pictures? Since he loves to photograph women in their most vulnerable moments, his last scene in the movie is him in photographs where he is soulless and dead. There is a scene in the movie where Venus is looking at her bloodstained hands. She is horrified and guilt-ridden. This represents that she is genuinely guilty of the violent act she has committed.
Goddess of Love (2015) Movie Review:
This is a beautiful movie in terms of direction, lighting, and dialogue. Venus’ character is complex. She is broken and isn’t equipped to handle trauma like infidelity. The film is thoroughly engrossing, with a few misses here and there that can be genuinely overlooked, considering how dominating Alexis Kendra is on screen. She is there in every single scene and is difficult to ignore.
On the other hand, Brian’s character was a bit of a letdown and had nothing much to offer. He is a grieving man who leads Venus on and then moves on with another woman. Overall, this is a chilling movie with lots of nudity, sex, symbolism, red wine, and mania. It’s for those who love a dark psychological thriller with art aesthetics and jazz music.
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Goddess of Love (2015 Links: IMDb
