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’.