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When reflecting on Roman Polanski's exile in Paris through the seventies, eighties and nineties, prior to his redemptive Oscar with The Pianist, it should come as no surprise that his films of this period are minor and eccentric. However, even in this light Bitter Moon is still a striking oddity.
Adapted from a novel by controversial French Neocon Pascal Bruckner, Bitter Moon concerns a stuffy, upper-crust English couple in their thirties, Nigel and Fiona, played by Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas, embarking on a cruise ship, their eventual destination India, in an attempt to rekindle the fires of their marriage. Early on in the cruise, they find a beautiful woman in hysteria, and try to help her. This act triggers off a strange fascination towards the beautiful, mysterious girl, Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigneur, Polanski's wife) on the part of Nigel, suffering from the seven year itch. Then he meets her invalid, wheelchair-bound American husband, Oscar. Nigel's fascination becomes a sordid infatuation, which is encouraged and facilitated by Oscar, whose only demand in return for engineering a love triangle is that Nigel meets him regularly in his cabin, so that he may recount his dangerous entanglement with Mimi, and how he ended up a crank in a wheelchair.
The story of Oscar and Mimi's relationship is revealed in flashback, a reverie about the first flush of love in a chance meeting in Paris between the charming older Oscar and innocent young dancer Mimi, which turns sour and ends up a cruel, sadomasochistic power-game. The narrative keeps coming back to the present in the cabin, and shows the voyeuristic effect of Oscar's tale on Nigel, who, being so repressed, English and stuffy, struggles and fails to disentangle himself from the menacing, lurid situation he has found himself in.
Much of this film is strewn with cliché, from its view of the English couple Nigel and Fiona, to the dissolution of the American writer in Paris (Oscar) and the corruption of innocent, passionate French girl Mimi. There is even a gauche Yank publisher Beverley, played by Stockard Channing and a turbaned 'Rajah', Singh, played with gusto by the neglected Indian actor Victor Banarjee.
Still, Bitter Moon is oddly enjoyable, even at times fascinating, for its assured and humorous direction, for instance in juxtaposing ejecting toast with orgasm (after all this is Polanski) and Vangelis' beautiful, touching score. Peter Coyote is good as the gruff American, Emanuelle Seigner somehow brings pathos to the sketchy character of Mimi, Kristin Scott Thomas looks the part as an upper-class, repressed woman, and even Hugh Grant is watchable, as he is, for once, meant to be playing an affected Englishman.
Also, if you feel (like me) that Polanski is spoofing in many places with his tongue-in-cheek, then much of the film, particularly its endgame, becomes downright hilarious. The resolution involves a shooting, a display of sapphism between Fiona and Mimi and a drunken punch-up by men in fancy dress at a New Year's party, made up mostly of old-timers in the ballroom of a cruise ship as it is rocked about by a forceful gale.
score /10
Afzal-s2007 17 September 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1731675/ |
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29-11-2019 23:13:12
