2023-09-02 20:58:00
If, Thursday evening, Luc Besson pulled out of the game with Dogman, presented in Competition while its author was cleared of any accusation of rape by the French justice, it is not the same for Roman Polanski. Still threatened with extradition to the United States, the Franco-Polish filmmaker obviously did not make the trip to the Lido. If he lives in Paris today, it is in Gstaad, Switzerland, where he owns a chalet in which he was under house arrest, that the filmmaker shot his latest film The Palace, unveiled out of competition on the Lido on Saturday. evening.
The movie too many
Beyond the controversy over the selection of Polanski’s latest film in a festival which had already hosted his last film J’accuse in Competition in 2019, it is distressing to see the great filmmaker that he was, the author of Chinatown or The Pianist, falling so low, with an incredibly heavy burlesque comedy. So much so that we do not know if, on Friday evening, the whistles which welcomed the film were intended for the man Polanski, accused of rape, or for the director…
Produced by Rai and the Polish Film Institute, The Palace features international high society gathered in a palace in the Swiss Alps on New Year’s Eve 2000. We meet Russian mafiosos and their blonde bimbos, a French marquise (Fanny Ardant) and her incontinent dog, a bunch of ultra-lifted old women and their plastic surgeon, an ultra-rich American crook with the false airs of Donald Trump (Mickey Rourke), a nonagenarian billionaire (John Cleese) and his obese young new wife of 22 years… So many customers multiplying the caprices, on which watches a brave hotel manager (Oliver Masucci) running to the left and to the right to try to satisfy their slightest desires.
Roman Polanski, on the set of “The Palace”. ©DR
distressing vulgarity
Co-written with the Polish Jerzy Skolimowski, The Palace accumulates grotesque situations, caricatural characters and wallows in permanent vulgarity, between scatology, grossophobia and gratuitous rudeness. Next door, Benny Hill, it’s high class… Not to mention second-rate actors or on the return…
Roman Polanski was no doubt dreaming of a satire of the ultra-rich in the style of No filter by Swede Ruben Östlund (the Palme d’or 2022), the old filmmaker, who has just celebrated his 80th birthday, gives birth to an old film, which seems as senile as its characters. And which ends with an image – perhaps the last of his cinema – like a childish snub to his detractors.
Faced with such an artistic shipwreck, this selection from The Palace seems incomprehensible. Otherwise as a displayed support from the Mostra to Roman Polanski. A film to discover nevertheless soon on the Belgian screens, since it was bought.
Mickey Rourke as a mobster à la Donald Trump in “The Palace” by Roman Polanski… ©DR
The Palace Comedy By Roman Polanski Screenplay Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski Photography Paweł Edelman Music Alexandre Desplat Editing Hervé de Luze With Luca Barbareschi, Mickey Rourke, John Cleese, Fanny Ardant… Duration 1h40
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