The Shadow of Bharani in Femina Ridens: Eroticism, Destruction, and Feminine Judgement
First of all, thank you so much for the warm response to my last post on Bharani Nakshatra and The Divine Comedy. I honestly didn’t expect it to reach as many of you as it did, so thanks for the love on it <3 That analysis was deeply personal to me, so I’m very grateful if it resonated.
Today, I’m bringing you another exploration—this time through cinema.
I recently revisited one of my all-time favorite films, Femina Ridens (The Laughing Woman), and felt inspired to explore it through a new lens—this time, delving into its Bharani themes, or at least my interpretation of them.
This one’s a bit of a long read, so I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to go through it in full.
⚠️ Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen the movie.
Plot as Initiation: The Sadist, the Trap, the Reversal
Femina Ridens (1969) is an Italian erotic thriller that transcends its genre, blending psychological tension, erotic spectacle, and dreamlike visual storytelling.
The plot follows Dr. Sayer (Phillipe Leroy) a cultured and wealthy philanthropist who harbors deep misogyny and sexual repression. On weekends, he lures women to his secluded villa, staging elaborate sadomasochistic “games” that end in their fake deaths. But when Maria (Dagmar Lassander), a poised and curious reporter, visits him, he blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.
He drugs and kidnaps her, isolates her in his villa, and subjects her to a series of cruel, theatrical games, each underscored by the constant suggestion of imminent death. He obsessively rants about women’s future power: a world without men, one where they reproduce independently and dominate.To illustrate his fears, he points to nature, warning that females as a species are learning to live self-sufficiently, no longer reliant on men.
These misogynistic soliloquies, combined with the “evidence” of his previous "victims" — create a suffocating atmosphere of fear and helplessness. Under this pressure, Maria’s composure seems to unravel, culminating in a desperate suicide attempt that appears to signal her submission.
The aftermath of Maria’s apparent suicide throws Sayer into panic. Confronted with the real consequences of his sadistic games, his practiced composure crumbles. Desperate to regain her, he admits that everything he showed her — the evidence of past victims, the photographs, the macabre displays — was a fabrication. He confesses that he has never killed anyone, and, confronted by the intensity of his own desire and his inability to follow through, he reveals the truth: he cannot kill her — because he has fallen in love with her. Vulnerability seeps through his carefully maintained mask of control; he apologizes, admits his failings, and expresses a sincere desire to change.
For a fleeting moment, it seems that Maria’s ordeal has softened the sadist, and that his ego might finally yield to empathy and genuine intimacy. They share a rare, almost surreal moment of peace, venturing to a castle and frolicking in the surrounding meadow — a brief glimpse of connection before the final, devastating turn.
In the fleeting joy of their day together, Sayer abandons every guard. Yet when they share intimacy for the first — and last — time, Maria strikes. At his most vulnerable, both emotionally and physically, his deepest fear materializes: the total loss of control he had long clung to. He dies, consumed by the very force he had sought to dominate.
Only at the very end does the full truth emerge: the apparent reprieve was never real, but the story’s final twist. Maria had been orchestrating everything from the beginning. She allowed herself to be “captured,” endured his twisted games, even staged her own suicide attempt — all to lure him into complete emotional surrender.
We also discover that Sayer was not the first.
In her lair, Maria keeps a photo album filled with portraits of other men — past victims — to which she now adds Sayer’s image. Each photograph stands as a haunting record of men undone by her design, a testament to her calculated vengeance.
In this revelation, she is no longer the captive but the true orchestrator, a force of fate from which no man escapes.
This is Bharani energy in narrative form, where female sexuality becomes assertion, Shakti becomes the ultimate force of karmic justice, power is inverted, and the supposed victim becomes the arbiter of fate.
Bharani Nakshatra: Feminine Judgment
Bharani, ruled by Venus (Shukra) and associated with Yama, the god of death and judgment, is symbolized by the yoni — the womb, the gateway, the source of both creative and destructive feminine power. This is not a gentle Venus, but Shakti as devourer, seductress, and arbiter.
In Femina Ridens, Maria embodies Bharani’s Venus: beautiful, seductive, merciless, and transformative. She allows herself to appear “defeated” only to later deliver judgment — a karmic reversal enacted through Venus’s allure.
Dr. Sayer, hiding behind a mask of culture and control, is confronted with the raw feminine not as fantasy, but as force. Maria plays the role of victim with calculated precision, allowing him to project his desires onto her before flipping the narrative and seizing control of his downfall.
Beauty as a Trap: Danger Hidden Behind Allure
The film repeatedly juxtaposes beauty with danger, presenting a realm in which charm and allure are inseparable from threat, and what seems inviting often harbors destruction.
From Sayer’s obsession with turning potentially deadly pathogens into artistic paintings, his beautifully crafted antique knives, and elaborately decorated torture chambers, to the seemingly serene meadow and the picturesque castle, and even Maria herself, the imagery constantly signals that appearances are deceptive.
One of the most potent images — and perhaps the clearest Bharani symbol — in Femina Ridens is the large, surreal sculpture that appears during the opening titles and again near the end of the film — a stylized vulva, clearly modeled after Niki de Saint Phalle’s 1966 installation Hon-en Katedral (“She — A Cathedral”). That original work was a massive, walk-in sculpture shaped like a reclining female figure, legs spread wide, inviting visitors to enter through the vulva into a womb-like space. It was a radical feminist act: turning the female body into sacred architecture, transforming the cathedral — long a phallic, patriarchal symbol — into a temple of feminine power.
In Femina Ridens, this sculpture functions as the physical embodiment of Bharani’s Venus — not the soft goddess of love, but the devouring Shakti force that births, transforms, and annihilates.
At the film’s climax, as Sayer approaches his doom, the sculpture’s secret is revealed: it houses a vagina dentata — a mythical toothed vagina, a symbol of feminine power capable of castrating or annihilating those who enter. He steps inside, and when the doors open again, all that remains is a human skeleton, a chilling testament to the lethal force of the feminine as both seductive and destructive.
This striking image also encapsulates the film’s core paradox: the yoni as both gateway and grave, erotic and deadly.
The Inversion of Power: Seduction as Strategy
In Femina Ridens, Maria embodies Bharani’s devouring feminine energy, using her sexuality as a deliberate tool of control. Nearly all of the film’s focus is on the interplay between her and Sayer, revealing that wealth, status, and outward dominance offer no protection against the subtle, consuming power of desire.
The film employs BDSM and sadomasochistic imagery as a metaphor for shifting power dynamics. While men may assert physical dominance or flaunt strength, women wield subtle mastery through erotic strategy. Maria entices, tests, and withholds Sayer’s release, controlling the rhythm of intimacy and his pleasure; her seduction becomes a ritualized game of domination and submission, in which the masculine energy is drawn in, enticed, and ultimately consumed.
In one striking scene, she dances seductively, draped only in gauze, using her body and allure to lure Sayer — this is a visual embodiment of Bharani’s Yoni energy, the magnetism of desire, and the death drive at work.
Her sexuality is never submissive but strategic — it's a deliberate performance of surrender that draws the masculine into its own shadow. Through her, the very tools of erotic oppression are inverted into instruments of karmic justice.
This is Bharani as a Ugra (fierce) nakshatra: outwardly graceful, inwardly corrosive, demanding truth at the cost of ego — and ultimately, life.
The Laughing Woman: Shakti and Karmic Reversal
Maria’s actions in Femina Ridens reflect Bharani’s most powerful themes: the mix of eroticism, destruction, and karmic justice.
While the story might not feel realistic on the surface, through the lens of female sexuality, desire, and power dynamics—the essence of Bharani—it gains a deeper meaning. Maria is more than just a character; she is a force, Shakti made flesh, both devouring and transformative.
She is The Laughing Woman—and in the end, she has the last laugh, not as a victim, but as the ultimate arbiter of fate.
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