8 months After its presentation at the Venice Film Festival, “The Palace”, Roman Polanski’s latest film, arrives in theaters this Wednesday, without promotion or communication, and accompanied by corrosive reviews.
What is it about ?
In a large hotel, on the evening of December 31, 1999, at the dawn of the new millennium, the crossed destinies of several guests and the staff of this establishment located in the Swiss Alps.
The Palace is Roman Polanski’s 24th feature film. Filming took place in 2022, in Switzerland, in the 5-star Gstaad Palace hotel. The plot takes the form of a closed session. In the cast, we find among the most famous personalities Fanny Ardant, John Cleese and Mickey Rourke. German actor Oliver Masucci, as well as Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida, complete the cast.
An outing in a particular context
It is in a very particular context that The Palace, Roman Polanski’s latest film, arrives. The verdict in one of Roman Polanski’s trials fell yesterday (the latter was acquitted in the face of actress Charlotte Lewis), and it is therefore the day after this legal News that his 24th feature film arrives.
The cinema release calendar is also special, since the launch of the 77th Cannes Film Festival monopolizes all the attention. To the detriment of film releases outside Cannes. A way of playing counter-programming and/or occupying a date that is usually not popular with film distributors.
Only one theater will show the film in Paris
After being selected by the Venice Festival out of competition last September, The Palace remained for several months without a French distributor. To the point that some people were wondering about the potential theatrical release of the film. It was ultimately the small structure called Swashbuckler, which usually specializes in re-releasing heritage films, which embarked on the project of releasing the film.
As Le Parisien indicates, only one Parisian theater will screen the film, and in total, 82 theaters throughout France, which is few compared to the 520 theaters that screened his previous feature film, J’accuse, released in 2019 .
The film has already been released in several European countries, starting with Italy on September 28.
Corrosive criticism
Already freshly welcomed in Venice (Variety spoke of a “dead silence” in the room, as Le Parisien recalls), The Palace arrives accompanied by cold reviews for its French release. For the newspaper 20 Minutes, it is a “titanic shipwreck“.”We come away with the demoralizing and sticky impression of having witnessed a titanic shipwreck without a life-saving board and without a precious necklace. Like the jokes of an old uncle whom we adored when we were children and whom we now avoid during over-watered family meals, the film constitutes a painful experience: it does not make you angry, it makes pain.”
On the Parisian side, we summarize as follows: “What is this movie like? A big, sweet, stuffy, indigestible meringue. (…) Never really funny, this festival of cynicism and vulgarity ends in fragments of glass and confetti
and by a close-up of the marquise’s dog conscientiously sodomizing a penguin“.
In 20 Minutes, we can also read: “Even if we were raised to respect dear old heads and great filmmakers of the past, we realize very (too?) quickly that The Palace is a film about libidinous old gentlemen a little too focused on scatology and bad butt jokes. funny ones that we should no longer want to do in the 2020s.“
In Premiere: “It’s a film so aggressive, ugly and misanthropic that one could reasonably argue that Polanski intended it as a middle finger. A spit, designed to arouse the anger of the movie-going crowd, the sacrificial act of an author who, as he knows he will not leave the stage amid applause, chooses to encourage boos.“
The Palace by Roman Polanski, with Fanny Ardant, John Cleese, Oliver Masucci, is released in cinemas this Wednesday May 15, 2024.
