RHEVM API access speed?

I would like to use some simple command-line tooling for access to RHEVM, but the access speed for the API appears to be too slow to be useful. As an example, this little python block:

from ovirtsdk.api import API
api = API(url = "https://myserv", insecure = "True",
username = "my_user", password = "my_pass")

vms = []
users = []

vms = api.vms.list(max = "200")
users = api.users.list(max = "200")

takes about 1:50 to execute in our environment, thus making it unusable in any kind of interactive script. Response times are similar if I do a "GET" on the api URL like "https://myserv/api/vms".

This is an RHEV 3.3.0 environment; under normal circumstances we do NOT have login access to the RHEVM host.

Am I missing something obvious here, or is this really the speed we have to work with?

Thanks!