REVIEW: “Venus Xtravaganza, I’m Your Venus” on Netflix

On February 23, 1991 Paris Is Burning was released and changed the world. There will forever be mixed reviews as to whether Jennie Livingston hurt or helped the culture but it undeniably exposed wider society to the world of Black and Brown, Queer NYC and Ballroom. Although Transness has existed in different forms always, Paris Is Burning peeked behind the current in ways mainstream hadn’t seen before. It introduced them to names and faces that will be forever etched in Black and Brown Queer and Trans history. One of those was the soft-spoken, petite blond with personality that filled the room, Venus Xtravaganza. 

In her 2024 film just released on Netflix, I’m Your Venus, Kimberly Reed explores the Pellagattis brothers (Venus’ biological siblings) experience as they meet with House of Xtravaganze members and team up to reopen the case surrounding Venus’ 1988 murder. Paris Is Burning was released in early 1991 but Venus Xtravaganza never got to see herself become an icon. Her body was discovered in a hotel room in NYC in 1988. 

The documentary follows John, Joe and Louie Pellagattis as they tell stories about their sisters life and death, visit the Jersey City neighborhood they grew up in, meet with the current Mother of Xtravaganza, Gisele Xtravaganza and the team of lawyers they are working with to compel the NYPD to reexamine the case and release existing details the family says they were never provided. 

Being from community and watching this type of project you can’t help but tune in with both great appreciation that the story is being told as well as deep cynicism about how it will be told. The brothers lovingly talk about their sister and troubled childhood but you wonder if that’s the only version you’ll hear. Through the 85 minutes, the film manages to deconstruct that being the only POV and you watch Venus’ friends and chosen family tell their experience of her, not just in confessionals to the camera but directly to the Pellagattis’. Her friends that became her family are clearly still hurting not just for Venus but from their own experiences with families who didn’t carve out room for them to live authentically and it is palpable. In one particularly poignant moment, activist Gia Love sets up a meeting with the brothers and Jose’ Disla Xtravaganza at the Hudson Pride Center. The meeting is tense and you can tell that Jose’ is angry for Venus since she spoke to him first hand about her experiences at home. The scene ends on a relatively high note but there is pain there and defensiveness as the brothers begin to defend how much they loved their sister but from that moment forward, you can more obviously see their guilt, their personal realizations about how it shouldn’t have taken so long for them to deep dive into her murder and how they pushed away their sister away long before she was taken. It struck me as being important for other families to see. What happens when you wait too long but also ways to chip away at making it right even when you did. 

The family works toward resolution of her case, having the home Venus grew up in declared a Jersey City Historical monument, lobbying for a posthumous name change- having her name legally changed to Venus Pellagattis Xtravaganza after her death and leaning into community to gain a better understanding of her life and experience. For some reason, the scenes of the City Council discussing the historical monument designation were particularly moving to me, I cried, and maybe that is just a reflection of the legislative legitimacy at a time when so many of us are fighting so hard for legislation to just keep us alive. 

The doc does have some significant triggers that watchers need to be aware of. There are semi-graphic depictions of how Venus’ life was taken. There are beautiful scenes of the crowds gathered around the gas station in Brooklyn where O’Shea Sibley was murdered in 2023 that hit hard for those of us who knew him or were acutely aware of what happened that night. It being so real and so recent is tough to relive. The portrayals of the complicated experience of an Italian and Puerto Rican family navigating violence, poverty, alcoholism and a Trans sister felt honest but certainly can be a hard watch for anyone that has lived through similar. 

You can’t help but be cautiously concerned about it being someone outside of the culture telling this story again but I think its the eye of the beholder and time that will be the judge of how that lands. It did seem to me that this version felt more journey and less fishbowl than Paris did and I can only pray that the community participants in this film were compensated better by the producers, the studio and now Netflix than the original cast was. The story, Venus’ story is important. It is important as the 23yr old legend that never saw 24 and is important as a representative of the countless Black and Brown Trans women who go lost or have been murdered every single one of the 37yrs since Venus’ death. That was the point that Gisele Xtravaganza seemed to make time and time again in the film. 

I’m Your Venus ends with the brothers getting called out during LSS and then one of the brothers, the one that seems to harbor the most guilt, speaks in voice over about the impact of waiting too long and “when tomorrow never comes.” He says how if he could speak to his sister again, that the first thing he’d say was that he was sorry. You had to assume that “sorry” carried a hundred different things. I feel like many viewers might take that as too little too late, but many others may see themselves in the Pellagattis’ and hopefully choose differently. I hope they do at least. 

This is one for the culture even if it isn’t exactly by it. However, I do think I caught Dominique Jackson in the credits. She also appears in a few of the final scenes. I think if you have a love for Ballroom, NYC Queer culture or an interest in deeper dives into the lives of the original Paris cast, it’s a good watch, even if not an easy one.