Seduction: The Cruel Woman
1985 film by Elfi Mikesch
Seduction: The Cruel Woman (Verführung: Die grausame Frau) is a 1985 West German film, directed by Elfi Mikesch and Monika Treut, who both co-wrote the screenplay. The character Wanda is portrayed by Mechthild Großmann. The film was inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs.
Synopsis
Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in Hamburg. She lures men and women of all types into her sadomasochistic world where audiences pay for the privilege of seeing her humiliate her slaves. The end is an ultimate mix of eros and thanatos.
And when she is eventually gunned down, not by her American female lover whom she turns into an assistant-Mistress and not by her older tender shoe-fetishist motherly concerned lover either, but by — of all people — her husband (who is also her slave), the supreme joy on her face is absolutely ineffable.
The public source identifies “Seduction: The Cruel Woman” as 1985 film by Elfi Mikesch. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Seduction, Cruel and Woman.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q321468. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seduction: The Cruel Woman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.