Of all the heroes, the most respected are those who, when in doubt, opt for sacrifice. After all, immolating yourself is a way of showing that you are stubborn (or just stubborn) enough to be above something as vulgar as the fight for survival. Let those who have nothing better to do survive.
That must have thought at some point Roman Polanski when he devised The Palacethe comedy (to call it in a standard way) with which he reappeared this Saturday in Venice after the acclaimed for its classicism The officer and the spy (2019). All of it is, from start to finish, a refutation from excess, lewdness and irreverence of the most basic laws of the genre that gave so much glory to, for example, Billy Wilder.
Else, we are facing a superb and, at times, incomprehensible immolation. That or a self-boycott, which is perhaps more elegant.
Let’s say that because of the director’s fondness for making autobiographical films without being noticed (the previous one was about the Dreyfus case, a man unfairly accused), the Polish director locked up in Switzerland for the non-prescribed crime of rape of a minor in 1977 now tells the story of a confinement in a luxury hotel in Switzerland as well.
We are at the end of the year party that will lead to the new millennium and a group of millionaires beyond reason made up of porn stars on the decline, Russian mobsters, old geezers, unscrupulous plastic surgeons and Mickey Rourke they huddle together in a strange and very excessive celebration. In the cast, in addition to the aforementioned, Fanny Ardant, John Cleese, Joaquim de Almeida and many others.