Bitter Moon (1992)
Directed by Roman Polanski
A passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic's wife.
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What critics compared Bitter Moon to
A sort of seagoing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," it's about the romantic Sturm und Drang that rages among cruise passengers Hugh Grant, Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner and Kristin Scott-Thomas.
Roman Polanski's seagoing ironical black comedy melodrama evokes memories of the landlocked but similarly corrosive Michael Nichol's 1966 "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?."
Sólo baste ver dos ejemplos de películas que ya han tratado el tema sin tanto escándalo y cursilería: la genial Bitter Moon de Roman Polanski (1992) y aquella obra maestra final de Stanley Kubrick llamada Eyes Wide Shut (el “we need to fuck” del final).
Son distinguibles ecos con Hitchcock (Rebecca, 1940), Haneke (Amour, 2012), Polanski (Bitter Moon, 1992), pero su mayor influencia sigue siendo Anderson mismo.
Before watching the film, the notion of Polanski working on something so seemingly anonymous and formulaic struck me as an odd way for him to utilize his considerable talents but after only a few minutes, those apprehensions were quickly erased because not only is “The Ghost Writer” a smart and efficient political thriller, it is also a Roman Polanski film through and through--not only that, it is, with the exception of “The Pianist,” easily the best thing he has done since “Bitter Moon” and possibly since “Tess.”
Sure, he sullied it along the way, be it with admissions of statutory rape, or movies like Pirates, but when you carry a canon that contains the likes of Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, and The Tenant, we can forgive a few Bitter Moons along the way.
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No such permission was extended, however, to Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, a black farce about the pitfalls of amour fou.
Seigner (aka Mrs. Roman Polanski), whom you might recognize from Polanski's Bitter Moon and Frantic , is starting to lose her credibility as a sex goddess, I will note.
The Ninth Gate is the first film from legendary director Roman Polanski since his double-whammy in 1994, Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden.
He is suddenly being shadowed by a mysterious woman (Emmanuelle Seigner of "Bitter Moon" and "Frantic) and is stalked, robbed, beaten up and drawn into a plot that is much larger than he can bring himself to believe.
After the modest Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden , Polanski has made an expensive-looking, voluptuous movie that revels in its decadent atmosphere.
In any case, this is a heaping plate of overcooked Roman, a lesser descendant of 1967's campy "Fearless Vampire Killers," a full self-parodying step behind 1992's "Bitter Moon" and light years in the dust of the director's most vital work.
And that may be where the old master from "Rosemary's Baby" (even better, "Chinatown," "Tess" and "Bitter Moon") has gone wrong commercially.
It sounds promising enough, especially in the hands of a director like Polanski whose filmography is chock-full of works featuring seemingly normal characters behaving very badly in close confines, including "Repulsion," "Cul-de-Sac," "The Tenant," "Bitter Moon" and "Death and the Maiden," to name but a few.
And certainly not his recent fare, which has included duds like Bitter Moon and The Ninth Gate.