At the Venice Film Festival, where a pretentious piece of shit will routinely get a twenty-minute Standing Ovation (good films get twenty-two), Roman Polanski’s scabrous comedy about an ultra-luxe Swiss-Alps Resort Hotel on New Year’s Eve ‘YK’ got five. Barely enough time for all the producers & talent to get on stage. Commercial rollout DOA. Is it really that bad? Well, yes and no. There’s something to be said about Polanski biting the hand that feeds him, taking pot shots at the aging ghouls & gargoyles who populate Price-No-Object resorts & Film Fests for forced holiday fun. And what a noxious/toxic lot they are! Especially when catered to by impeccable hotel & personal staff while they attend to the appearance of eternal youth and the pursuit of fresh partners in bed & business. Less Jonsonian satire than Feydeau farce; less IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD/’63 slapstick greed than the Little Foxes of Blake Edwards’ S.O.B./’81*, but with the Davos crowd & Russian mobsters in for Hollywood hypocrites. (Note Polanski nipping Edwards’ propped up dead body gag. Or was he thinking WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S/’89?) Alas, we can’t recapture the air of disapproval & mortified silence of that Film Fest premiere. (It’s like seeing Woody Allen’s STARDUST MEMORIES/’81 without Manhattan Upper East Side ambience.) But if Polanski’s comic cruelty works better in small doses within his dramatic vehicles, there’s still a decent ratio of laughs between gross gags about overindulging in caviar, plus some fine Euro-based comedians new to you. God knows, the ones you do know not at their best. But if ‘the prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges,’ as Philip Barry said in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY/’40, there’s little uglier than watching them indulge their tastes & fantasies. For optimal enjoyment, pretend you’re watching a documentary.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Anything mentioned above would do, but go for S.O.B. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/sob-1981.html
OR: For those who think Polanski, now pushing 90, has lost a step, see his previous film, a muscular look at the Dreyfus Affair which received little Stateside attention. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/07/jaccuse-officer-and-spy-2019.html
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