Bitter Moon (1992)

	Directed by: Roman Polanski	AKA Lunes de fiel COUNTRY France/UK GENRE Drama/Thriller NORWEGIAN TITLE Bitter hevn RUNNING TIME 139 minutes
	Produced by: Roman Polanski
	Written by (based on the novel by Pascal Bruckner): Roman Polanski Gerard Brach John Brownjohn

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Nigel	Hugh Grant
Fiona	Kristin Scott Thomas	½
Mimi	Emmanuelle Seigner	½
Oscar	Peter Coyote	½
Mr. Singh	Victor Banerjee
Amrita Singh	Sophie Patel
Dado	Luca Vellani	½

Review

This is a delightful mixture of corny and alluring, signed by the all-too-clever Roman Polanski. Genre-wise, Bitter Moon is rooted in the well of erotic thrillers appearing in the early 1990s, made popular by films such as Basic Instinct, Sliver and Damage. Polanski's contribution is, like Louis Malle's Damage, ostensibly a tad more sophisticated than its counterparts. He goes one step further with the erotic, the emotional and the interpersonal, creating a setup that is intriguing and ludicrous at once. Bitter Moon is playful, enticing and silly – but it is so silly and over-the-top that we cannot refrain from becoming caught up with it. And while Polanski balances trashy and tasteless yet constantly interesting schemes and power struggles with at times steamingly hot erotic material that Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas would struggle to equal, Peter Coyote is having so much fun in the lead that we eventually see through to the cunning humour of Polanski's tale. You may not learn all that much about what French women are really about, but you might get an insight into how British relationships evolve.