Por­trait of a Lady on Fire meets The Safe­keep in this grip­ping debut that reck­ons with art forgery, desire, sus­pi­cion, and resis­tance

In rau­cous 1928 Berlin, Han­nah Sher­man has devi­at­ed from the tra­di­tion­al arc of a woman’s life. An artist and a run­away, she rev­els in the city’s under­ground art scene and her new­found free­dom. Work­ing as a tai­lor while study­ing art in every spare moment, Han­nah comes to know women and their bod­ies, first with mea­sur­ing tape and silk, and lat­er through sen­su­ous lay­ers of paint.

Han­nah feels like she can final­ly call her­self an artist when an intox­i­cat­ing, wealthy female col­lec­tor com­mis­sions an elab­o­rate series of nude por­traits. But after Han­nah fin­ish­es the acclaimed Venus paint­ings, she dis­cov­ers that her work has been tam­pered with and exhib­it­ed under a man’s name. When lines between artist and muse are crossed in a heady but per­ilous affair, Han­nah trans­forms her work into an act of revenge, find­ing her­self caught up in a dev­as­tat­ing game of betray­al.

Laced with queer desire and life-threat­en­ing secrets, Venus, Van­ish­ing puls­es with the hedo­nism and dan­ger of 1930s Berlin as his­to­ry comes to Hannah’s door, offer­ing a heart-pound­ing sto­ry of Jew­ish sur­vival, cre­ativ­i­ty, and resistance.