Bitter Moon
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Bitter Moon Hugh Grant, Peter Coyote |
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| Starring | Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Coyote, | |
| Directed by | Roman Polanski | |
| Studio | New Line Home Video | |
| Released | 1992 | |
| Runtime | 139 minutes | |
| IMDB Info | 0104779 on IMDb | |
| Buy it from | Amazon.com on VHS | |
| Buy it from | Amazon.com on DVD | |
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It's a shame that people see this film as a sick, perverted joke.
Critics and public alike always make the same mistake of judging the film by it's director's life and not solely on content alone. If you separate Polanski's turbulent, and frequently tragic life from this material, you'll see that this is a piece of work by an intelligent, honest, humanistic storyteller at the peak of his creative powers and not a sick joke by a pervert. This is a powerful film about love, and to view it as a sort of a soft-core, titillation exercise by Polanski is to miss the point of the film. The up-front sexuality of the film is there not to merely provoke a cheap arousal from the viewer. The film's frankness is used to point out how empty and hollow the couple's relationship really is, and how far people are willing to go in order to save love that was never really there to begin with. Make no mistake, this is a mature and meticulously constructed work that is no less focused than Polanski's well-respected masterpieces like Rosemarie's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist.
I saw this film when it first came out and was so moved and captivated by it I took my mother to see it the very next day. She had the same reaction and was nearly moved to tears by the ending, which is quite possibly the most shattering emotional sequence I've ever seen in cinema. Polanski is a genius and this film shows that he has more heart and more soul than any one of the M. Night Shymalans of today could ever hope (or claim) to have. The acting (Coyote and Seigner are phenomenal together), the cinematography and production design are all first rate. Paris never looked so beautiful. Vangelis contributes his most lyrical and poignant score after 'Blade Runner'.
"Bitter Moon" succeeds where "Eyes Wide Shut" fails, 20 August 2004 Author: L Flowers from Virginia, USA
To dismiss this film as mere black comedy is to miss the point; it's more a lethally serious story cloaked in farce. The sexual extremes the characters go to are riotous; there is no doubt Polanski has a wickedly great sense of humor. But once Oscar and Mimi's ludicrous pornographic shenanigans have wound down, the film becomes something else altogether. There is nothing funny about Oscar's treatment of Mimi towards the end of and in the wake of their relationship, or her absolute...and almost unbearably realistic...desperation to be with him at any cost; by the time the film winds up to her inevitable loathing of him, and the subsequent acts of revenge she takes, all comic pretense has evaporated in lieu of a deadly serious story about one person who has destroyed another human being (quite irreparably) with emotional and sexual excesses. Oscar's life is not ruined; only inconvenienced; he is incapable of regret, motivated entirely by self pity.
Upon reflection, "Bitter Moon" is largely...though very possibly inadvertently...a story about the suffering of women. As emotional characters, both Nigel and Oscar remain petty and stereotypical, at least until the very end of the film. It is really Mimi's story that is at the heart of it all, and therefore unfortunate that Seigner's acting is not up to par. Her role gives her a great deal to work with; as written, it has the potential to be great, but she simply doesn't have the talent or the confidence to make it so. Physically, she both exacerbates and compliments the concept of Mimi; in spite of her great beauty and femininity, there's an almost mannish coarseness, a heavy hewn, feral impassivity to her features that seems to negate her character's initial innocence (though by the end, it suits her).
Oscar's ongoing narrative reveals him (hilariously) to be a horrifyingly bad writer ("Nothing ever surpassed the rapture of that first awakening..I might have been Adam with a taste of apple fresh in my mouth") even as he complains bitterly of heading steadily towards the grave, sans a respectable publisher. His complete lack of physical and psychic sexual charisma makes every "erotic" encounter he describes sound cringingly tacky.But his cruelty is somehow as recognizably legitimate as Nigel's simpering cowardice.
Kristin Scott Thomas's Fiona is by far the most well acted, subtle, and painfully sympathetic character in the movie. She's adrift...literally and figuratively....in a sea of corruption and lies; and her almost noble desperation to beat her husband at his own game is devastating. She never once loses her dignity, even when she is degrading herself; her tryst with Mimi is not an act of vengeance, it's a sacrifice, a paradoxical act of grace, and great resignation, she carries out ...in a twisted sense...so her husband doesn't have to. This is made clear by the film's moving final scene, when she is moved to tears by the innocence of the little girl.
Finally, in spite of Seigner's shortcomings, this film is a triumph. Mimi is a portrait of innocence and love urned to bitterness and expert, manipulative craftsmanship by betrayal. Oscar is first and last and always to her. She can neither survive him nor live down what he did to her; one or both of them have to die or go free....and they do. In the end, Nigel and Fiona realize that they were right in their 'traditional' observances all along, and that relationships between human beings must have limits if they are to encompass a sustainable union.
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