Bitter Moon Movie Trailer. On an awfully long ocean voyage, two buttoned-down English travelers named Nigel (Hugh Grant) and Fiona (Kristin Scott-Thomas) meet Oscar (Peter Coyote), a determined raconteur. Getting away from Oscar is impossible, even if it’s well worth a walk off the gangplank. Oscar is determined to pry Nigel away from his spouse and regale him with red-hot memories of Oscar’s own rocky romance. Oscar and Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner), who is also very conspicuously on board, have had a sufficiently tumultuous time of it to land Oscar in a wheelchair.
One of Oscar’s memories is of how Mimi first told him he would be paralyzed. She had good news and bad news, she said. The part about the wheelchair? “That WAS the good news,” Mimi told him. “The bad news is that from now on, I’m taking care of you.”
In much the same spirit, there is both good news and bad news about “Bitter Moon,” the gleefully sadomasochistic love story directed by Roman Polanski, who is nothing if not the man for the job. The bad news: “Bitter Moon” is, by any reasonable standard, just awful. It’s smutty, far-fetched and bizarrely acted, especially by Ms. Seigner, who gives the kind of performance that can only be explained by the fact that she is the director’s wife.
The good news: Mr. Polanski seems to know all this, and even to encourage it. This material obviously appeals to his sense of mischief, which remains alive and well. Whatever else Mr. Polanski may be — nasty, mocking, darkly subversive in his view of the world — he definitely isn’t dull. “Bitter Moon” is the kind of world-class, defiantly bad film that has a life of its own.
One of the ripe little quasi-jokes here is that Oscar is a writer, and apparently not a very good one. As he regales the poor, sandbagged Nigel with the story of his love affair, he dishes out the purplest of prose. (The screenplay, by Mr. Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn, almost certainly has its tongue somewhere near its cheek.) “Eternity for me began one fall day in Paris,” begins Oscar to his captive audience. He later describes himself as “a man demolished by a love that was too strong.”
In flashback, Ms. Seigner is seen as the youthful Mimi (“my sorceress in white sneakers”), the kind of carefree nymph who can giddily indulge in a game of hopscotch but still has a suggestive way of carrying a baguette. Ms. Seigner looks big-boned and blowzy during the rest of the film (heavy makeup and black rubber dresses will do that), and she is not exactly nymph material. She only comes alive when mimicking her husband’s taunting inflections (“O.K., Nigel — amuse me!”)
Credibility is apparently not a real concern. When Mr. Polanski sends the lovebirds out to buy their first set of handcuffs, after Oscar and Mimi have developed the kind of passion that lends even the act of making morning toast a sexual connotation, he is presumably having fun with his material. Subsequent fun moves into the realm of bondage-style porn. “We were inseparable by day and insatiable by night,” Oscar rhapsodizes in his inimitable fashion. “We just lived on love and stale croissants.” Eventually, love turns sour and Mr. Polanski is even more the prankster. He gives Mimi a terrible haircut, puts her in a “Kiss the Cook” apron and lets Oscar turn cartoonishly mean in a flurry of creative ways.
Nigel is meant to be at first horrified at “being used as a rubbish dump for your unsavory reminiscences,” as he tells Oscar. Later, he is supposed to be titillated, although the suave Mr. Grant is much more convincingly aghast. Mr. Coyote plays his sicko Scheherezade with over-the-top gusto, but this wasn’t a role that cried out for restraint. Stockard Channing supplies a sporting cameo. The cool, poised Ms. Scott-Thomas has the film’s hardest job, that of maintaining a calm veneer while everyone else goes off the deep end.
Bitter Moon (1993)
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Starring: Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner, Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Victor Banerjee, Sophie Patel, Patrick Albenque, Smilja Mihailovitch, Leo Eckmann
Screenplay by: Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach, John Brownjohn
Production Design by: Willy Holt, Gérard Viard
Cinematography by: Tonino Delli Colli
Film Editing by: Hervé de Luze
Costume Design by: Jackie Budin
Music by: Vangelis
MPAA Rating: R for the strong depiction of a perverse sexual relationship.
Distributed by: Fine Line Features (USA), Columbia Pictures (UK)
Release Date: March 11, 1993 (USA), October 2, 1992 (UK)
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