Roman Polanski’s new film will have difficulty finding an audience. The palace, which already suffers from non-existent promotion, opens this Wednesday, May 15 in a very limited number of French theaters. A symbol of the disgrace into which the Franco-Polish director, the target of several accusations of sexual violence for forty years, has fallen.
This comedy sketch will be broadcast in a single theater in Paris, two in the Paris region and, according to Allocine, in 82 theaters throughout France. The plot of this film shot in 2022 in Gstaad, Switzerland, takes place in a luxury hotel, on the afternoon of the transition to the year 2000. In the credits, some well-known names, such as Fanny Ardant, John Cleese or Mickey Rourke, but not a popular star.
Persona non grata
The palace It comes four years after Roman Polanski’s controversial coronation at the César. your movie I accuse, crowned with twelve nominations, earned him the award for best director, even as a new #MeToo wave sweeps through French cinema following Adèle Haenel’s accusations against director Christophe Ruggia. The actress also caused a sensation by leaving the room when this award was announced, and the master of ceremony Florencia Foresti did not return to the stage.
Since then, Roman Polanski had already returned to theaters last summer, this time as a theme. Directors Mateusz Kudla and Anna Kokoszka-Romer accompanied him to Krakow, following in the footsteps of his childhood marked by the Shoah, for the documentary Walk in Krakow. The film was only released in two theaters in France, as Franceinfo reported at the time. ““The operators are cautious and not very brave,” Then said Sophie Dulac, owner of the Arlequin cinema.
“No one wanted him”
For The palace, the delivery drivers also chose to pass their shift. “Nobody wanted it,” he said. Parisian Sébastien Tiveyrat, director of Swashbuckler, a small structure specialized in heritage films that obtained the rights to Polanski’s feature film in France:
“I threw myself into it. I offered a price to the producer, with my means, and he accepted without negotiating (…) I was almost ashamed of the price I offered…”
Collected Swordsman The palace at the price of the old films that it usually distributes. Or “ten times cheaper” than the envelope assigned to a classic film, he confesses to the newspaper.
Killed by critics
The theatrical release of this film with a budget of 17 million euros, according to Variety, was preceded by a cold reception at the Venice Film Festival last September, which the director did not attend. The simple selection of The palace had been widely questioned and his detractors saw it as a symbol of the director’s impunity. The screening generated deadly criticism.
Release had described the feature film as a “contagious purge,” The Figaro had deplored a “shipwreck” and a “monumental failure,” while Telerama He had described it as “an indigestible and ugly film.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such deadly silence in such a large movie theater during a movie that tried so hard to be funny,” wrote the American magazine Variety.
Various accusations
Coinciding with the calendar, on Tuesday, May 14, the decision of the Paris judicial court was issued in the trial between him and Charlotte Lewis. The British actress sued him for defamation for calling her a liar when she accused him of rape. The director was released.
Roman Polanski has been accused of sexual assault and rape by a dozen women throughout his career, accusations that he has always denied and that have not prevented him from working.
He has been considered a fugitive in the United States for more than forty years, after a conviction for “illegal sexual relations” with a 13-year-old minor, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer).
In 1977, arrested, accused of having drugged and raped this teenager, he spent 42 days in prison before being released and heading to Paris. He has since been the subject of an international arrest warrant from the US justice system.
The filmmaker is called to appear in 2025 in California, during a civil trial for the rape of a teenager in 1973, accusations that he refutes “with the greatest firmness,” according to his Parisian lawyer.
Source: BFM TV
