Boy, don't you hate it when you really like something, and everybody else decries it as absolute shit? You feel like you're seeing something they aren't. Or they're seeing something you aren't. It's a weird feeling. And as I looked up the reviews of Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, my heart sank. Were we watching the same movie? Not only was there barely anything on the net about the movie (no interviews, few reviews...), but everybody (thankfully, except Ebert) hated it, and I just didn't get it.I had developed a real admiration for Polanski's work from his early films - Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Tess (1979) being my favourites. When browsing on Netflix late one night, I came across Bitter Moon, and took it on because I love Polanski movies, and wanted to give Hugh Grant one last chance to prove some acting skills beyond being his usual dithery English twat of a self. Well, my first motivation was ultimately supported. The second was an unsurprising let down.
Grant plays Nigel, who is exactly like every other guy he has ever played. He wears dodgy suits, stutters and grins a lot, and recites lengthy apologies when leaving a game of cards, as the other players ignore him entirely. He is on board a cruise ship with his wife Fiona, played by Kristin Scott Thomas as most of the other women she has ever played. She is stiff, matriarchal, cold and at times cunning. They are attempting to conquer the seven year itch with a trip to India, an aim not eased by the sudden presence of gorgeous, mysterious french woman Mimi. Mimi is played by Polanski's beautiful wife Emmanuelle Seigner, whom he has directed several other times, and she is an absolute siren. As her doomed lover later describes, she has a sexual maturity and a childish naivete.That night on deck, Nigel is set about by a loud Yankie cripple, Oscar, played by Peter Coyote, who is one of those types who imposes themselves on you with their dramatic demeanours. He begins to inflict his lifestory on Nigel over glasses of whiskey, teasing him with acknowledgement of his lust for Mimi, and promising that if Nigel will hear his story, he can have her.
The script, by Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn (great name, by the way, John) is based on the beautiful french novel Lunes de fiel by Pascal Bruckner, which I bought and read after falling for this movie, as I am a moderately talented french-speaker who finds great practise in french literature and a dictionary. Polanski diverts a little more from his original source than is characteristic of his work: Rosemary's Baby and Tess, both around three hours in length, take their time and stay remarkably loyal to the novels upon which they are based. It is a quality I truly admire about Polanski. He does not condense: he is a caring storyteller who makes sure everything is taken into account, and hence succeeds in creating as vivid a world on screen as those on the page, film after film.However, the powerful themes of Bitter Moon are bold, aggressive, primal. I believe I enjoyed this movie so much because it seemed to quite uncannily remind me of myself in years past. This is not an easy thing to admit, as Oscar and Mimi, both of whom begin as starcrossed Parisian lovers and show promise of lifelong affection, are ultimately wretched people. This is not necessarily their faults. Not all the time. But in coming to this conclusion, we are guided by the stark way in which Polanski addresses human behaviour and emotion.
Though Nigel and Fiona end up playing an interestingly pivotal role in the film's finale, Mimi and Oscar are the real focus, with Nigel playing the fourth wall to which the story is narrated. Oscar introduces his story some years earlier, where he is a middle-aged writer, living his dream Hemingway Paris life on a trust fund left by his pioneer grandfather. He is full of life and poetry and exuberance, and looking to write the masterpiece that will finally get him published. One day on a bus, he notices a beautiful young woman, 'my sorceress in white sneakers', who cannot find her ticket. Oscar slips her his, and takes the fine from the conductor. His romantic mind is besotted, and he stalks the city and the bus route looking for her. He finally bumps into her in a restaurant, and asks her out. Thus their touching romance begins.
In this movie, at the age of 26, Emmanuelle Seigner achieves that incredible balance, also achieved by the likes of Linda Blair, Catherine Deneuve and Britt Ekland, of being both terribly cute and thrillingly sexy. It's in the look and the nature, and it is so rare to fall dead in the middle of the spectrum, but it can create some fascinating onscreen characters, as all these actresses proved throughout their careers. When we first see Mimi on the bus, she is schoolgirl-like. She has long, straight, blonde hair and flat shoes, and her gaze is downcast. Her blossoming sexuality creeps in, from the low cut leotard and mini skirt she wears on their first date, to the sensational way she holds a baguette in the elevator. It is nicely escalated by a brilliantly memorable scene involving milk, a well timed toaster and George Michael's 'Faith'.Oscar's life, or the imagery Polanski and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli present it with, is as extravagant and poetic as his narration of it. Although I revel in the romantic way Oscar describes Mimi's vagina to Nigel, others I have watched with have not hesitated to laugh. Oscar's increasingly outrageous antics are at times quite laughable, but as his narration reminds us, he doesn't care what we think, because nobody could hate him more than he does himself. Moreover, he wants us to know him truthfully; he is committed to this cause. It plays out with the sense of Oscar taking some quasi-grandiose opportunity to record his memoir, even if it is only in the single mind of the single man to whom he tells it.
As our preliminary introductions to Mimi and Oscar have revealed, their current selves are considerably different to the two lovers at the beginning of Oscar's story. For one thing, Oscar was able-bodied enough to fuck for several days straight, and is now a paraplegic. For another, that timid city girl Mimi now wears voluminous curls, smoky makeup and slinky dresses, and loves to thrash about on the cruise ship dance floor. They have separate cabins and Oscar is content with an open relationship. What has gotten them both to this stage? And why is it so important for Nigel to hear, when Oscar has already declared that he does not begrudge Mimi seeking elsewhere 'that which I cannot provide'?
Now, this is a pretty fucking kinky picture. Among all the embarrassing hoo-haa by bored, unsatisfied housewives and excited students over the terrible Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, I declared that anybody seeking truly erotic and entertaining films should watch two Polanskis: Bitter Moon and Venus in Furs (also starring Seigner, who ignites the screen more than twenty years after playing Mimi). It turns out that both Oscar and Mimi have fairly ravenous sexual appetites, and fairly adventurous tendencies to match. And anybody who's ever visited Paris can attest to it being one of Europe's sex shop capitals (if it's not, I'm surprised: my partner Leon was amused to see a namesake sex shop there!) - so the next chapter of their affair commences: S&M.
In the course of this chapter, two major forces occur: the S&M gives way to cruelty which lies in a grey area between kink and abuse; and Oscar declares with their increasingly outside-the-box sexual experiments, that they were approaching 'sexual bankruptcy'. Their collaborative need for more eventually outdoes them, and the great love of Oscar's life is dead, and seemingly his soul along with it. When Mimi no longer presents any sexual potential, he casts her off, leaving her heartbroken and eventually so desperate for him that she is willing to do anything.
The formerly dormant cruelty and pomposity in Oscar's nature comes to fruition, and he decides to play a game with Mimi: if she won't leave willingly, he'll torment her into wanting to leave. Oscar is very different to almost any male movie character to find himself in a situation similar to this. The Rom-Com approach would be to give in to the woman's desperation, and live an unwanted and unfulfilling lifestyle to satisfy her, because hey, her behaviour is quirky. The Thriller and/or Horror approach would be to, well... take a leaf out of Limey Lyney's book and make Fatal Attraction; just bump her off, because it makes for good tension and means the man can go off and live his life. But as truly thrilling as Bitter Moon is, it takes the dramatic route: the one that is neither end of the spectrum, and settles for the ways real people might actually behave in such a situation.
Oscar is no 30 year-old pretty boy who tells hushed tales of his abusive parents in a husky whisper, in justification of his being an asshole as an adult. Nor can he say that he has been wronged by Mimi. His response to Mimi's neediness is not revenge, it's mere reaction. He is an asshole, and he knows it. He vocally encourages Nigel, and us, to go ahead and hate him, as he has hit that wall of self-loathing in which no further damage can possibly be endured, or dispensed. So what can be done in order to correct the hatred we feel towards Oscar? Well, Mimi needs her turn.
After demoralising and tormenting her into a quivering state, and ditching her on a plane headed for some exotic island following a botched abortion he insisted upon, Oscar really has it coming to him. Is he redeemable? And if so, is it only because of the pity we can't help but feel for this wretched individual? Mimi makes a surprise return from the exotic island, where she has been for so long that her former lover assumed he was free and clear, and is her new self, with the skirts and the make up. And, living up to the classic noir femme fatale role, she has devised her own plan of action, in which the power swaps hands, and we see Oscar suffer equal humiliation, bringing around some sort of karmic balance.
Bitter Moon is one of those movies I watch with some regularity, because it is just so damn gripping. It is emotionally enticing and wild and is so wonderfully unconventional.
