“The Palace” - a vulgar New Year's comedy from Roman Polanski

On November 23, Roman Polanski’s new film “The Palace” will be released in Russia. After its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, it caused heated discussions: some of the audience left the hall, while others gave a standing ovation. However, the latter did not save the film from criticism: at the time of writing this article, “The Palace” has exactly 0% positive reviews from critics on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s difficult to figure out whether the first reviewers really didn’t like the work that much or whether the negativity is related to personality the director himself, who, after being accused of rape, rarely travels to festivals, and does not even go to the USA appears. But here’s what we can say for sure: Polanski produced much more interesting films in the 21st century.

So what went wrong this time? The famous director simply made an unsuccessful film, did he forget how to film, or did he deliberately want to shock the audience?

"The Palace" wants to be a satire, but it turns out to be a toilet comedy

On December 31, 1999, a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps is preparing to celebrate the New Year. The helpful and incredibly active manager Hansueli (Oliver Masucci, familiar to viewers from the series "Dark") receives guests. He tries his best to make their stay comfortable, but representatives of high society constantly come up with problems for themselves.

The guests this time were very unusual: retired porn actor Bongo (Luca Barbareschi), financier Bill Crush, reminiscent of Donald Trump. (Mickey Rourke), plastic surgeon Lima (Joaquin de Almeida), the “new Russian” with suitcases of money (Alexander Petrov), billionaire Arthur William Dallas III (John Cleese from "Monty Python") and his wife (Bronwyn James), who is 70 years younger than her husband, an elderly marquise (Fanny Andar) with her beloved dog and many, many others.

Of course, it is on the festive night that something happens to each of them. And few people have anything good with them. Crush decides to carry out a cunning plan to withdraw money, but his son comes to him, whom he did not know about. The marquise feeds her pet caviar, which causes the dog to have indigestion, and the only doctor in the hotel is a plastic surgeon. A rich man orders a penguin for his wife as a gift. Meanwhile, Russian gangsters divide up the money in a World War II safe.

It would seem that Polanski’s idea is clear and very relevant: to gather caricatured representatives of high society, stir up problems and show all the ugliness of the behavior of such people. Satire on the elite is now very popular - including representatives of this very elite. A year ago, Ruben Östlund demonstrated something similar in “Triangle of Sadness” and received the Palme d’Or for it. Cannes Film Festival.

But for Polanski, sociality is only in the very idea of ​​the film, but not in its main action. For the most part, the plot is a set of comical sketches, most often vulgar and sometimes vile. Of course, Östlund was also criticized for the overly drawn-out storm scene, where all the visitors feel sick. But compared to the “Palace” these are flowers.

There is a whole storyline here about a dog’s loose stool: they remove it from the bed, throw it away, search for it, return it, rummage through it. And finally, the doctor will also hint to the hostess that her waste products also need to be studied. If that's not enough, there are jokes about a porn actor's penis and a sex scene in the style of the finale "Clerks» Kevin Smith. More? Okay: the “new Russian” is accompanied by a whole crowd of escorts who pester the modest accountant. And he is in such a hurry to go to the toilet that he knocks over a bowl of black caviar.

All this feels strange. If the film had been made by some of the Farrelly brothers (directors of “Dumb and Dumber”) or someone from the large Wayans family (authors of “Scary Movie”), there would be no questions. But Roman Polanski, pardon the cliched phrase, is a master of directing and storytelling.

He's good at social satire - think of Monster's Ball, which The Palace clearly references. He does a great job of showing people colliding in confined spaces - watch Bitter Moon, "Rosemary's Baby", "Massacre". And he’s good at comedy—remember the slightly absurdist film “What?”

But here Polanski seems to forget about all his experience and skill. Or did he just decide to have fun with his friends?

There are too many cartoon characters

The strangeness of the plot of “The Palace” is also in the excess of characters. Even in films with many storylines, the main characters are usually introduced at the very beginning. Then, like in some “Love Actually,” their stories are shown in parallel. Or the fates of the characters are getting closer and closer and eventually merge into one plot.

Polanski goes against the rules here too. Characters arrive throughout the film. Although there are too many of those who appear at the very beginning: the number of lines reaches up to a dozen. And somewhere towards the middle of the picture it begins to seem that the “Palace” is a kind of “casual fight”, where everyone who happened to be nearby was invited.

Moreover, the director assembled a very specific cast. There are practically no current stars of the first magnitude in the frame. The leading roles are either local European artists, like Oliver Masucci (who played the role very well) and Alexander Petrov, or already released Mickey Rourke, Fanny Ardant, the always wonderful John Cleese. It’s as if “The Palace” starred everyone who doesn’t have to worry too much about image.

Even worse, some of them seemed to be filmed separately from each other, even in common scenes. That’s why the meeting between Rourke’s character and his son is staged so crookedly: the characters look into nowhere and are clearly not talking to their interlocutor.

And the main thing is that all the characters seem to be in the same hotel, very close, but their plots will not really intersect - the guests will only trip over each other and exchange a few phrases.

Of course, the famous “Four Rooms” were built on the same principle - even the action took place there on New Year’s Eve. But it was an almanac of four consecutive short stories, and even from different directors. I still want to expect a more holistic story from Polanski. But, alas, “The Palace” will not please you even with this.

So is the director saying goodbye or mocking him?

Roman Polanski is already 90 years old. This, of course, does not mean that he can no longer make good films: Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood They are still turning out great pictures. And the director himself kept the level until recently.

However, “The Palace” is like not a film at all, but a prolonged joke of the author, his rude statement about life.

But what did he want to say?

Sometimes it seems that this is a kind of rebuke to modern cinema, mired in narcissism and politeness. You can also notice the director’s self-reflection: the old people in this film do plastic, marry young people and do not want to admit that they are behind the times. Is Polanski kidding himself?

But all this can be interpreted differently. The director, in such a vulgar form, seems to be admitting that he misses the old days. In the late 90s and early 2000s, when viewers could be amused by more naive and sometimes downright stupid techniques: jokes about animals having sex, transporting corpses, and seducing a plumber.

And even more, he misses the worries that, after years, always seem simpler. Recently, Judd Apatow directed “The Bubble,” about the isolation of actors during a pandemic, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed “The Big Bug,” about a family locked in by a rebellious smart home.

Polanski makes the starting point of the “Problem 2000” - a fear almost 25 years ago that did not happen Apocalypse, which a considerable part of the audience did not even catch. It’s as if he wants to say that I would really like to be afraid of changing numbers on computers, and not of another disease or armed conflict.

It’s not that there weren’t more serious troubles at the turn of the century, but now they have faded from the memory of many. Unless the scene where Petrov’s character and his assistants are watching the same thing will cause a lot of emotions in Russian viewers Boris Yeltsin's address on the eve of 2000.

“The Palace” cannot be called a good film, or indeed a “film” as such. It's more like a collection of strange sketches, united by a common atmosphere of madness. But surprisingly, this absurdity has its own charm.

Perhaps it lies precisely in the fact that the film was directed by Roman Polanski, a director from whom aesthetics and intense drama are expected. And he just throws vulgar jokes in the viewer's face. Not everyone can handle this. And whoever watches it will wonder whether there was any meaning to what was happening or whether the director was just making fun of it. The answer is not yet clear.