Roman Polanski is undoubtedly one of the most polarizing filmmakers in modern cinema. Yet the content of his films have long since been at the center of any debate regarding the veteran director’s artistic merit. When discussing Polanski, all rounds inevitably lead back to 1977, where the filmmaker fled authorities to France the night before the verdict of his unlawful sex with an underage girl charge was to be read. Despite the victim publically forgiving the director and a whole host of legal reasons why this event should long have been forgotten, the incident has plagued on Polanski’s career ever since.
Laurent Bouzereau’s film Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir is essentially a recorded conversation between the director and longtime friend and collaborator, Andrew Braunsberg. Shot in Gstaad, Switzerland, back in 2009, while Polanski was under house arrest and awaiting his potential extradition to the U.S. The film sets out to document the director’s life from the mouth of the man himself, by juxtaposing the dialogue between the two friends with archival footage of the director and from the films he created.
Polanski is an unquestionably compelling storyteller and his accounts of Holocaust survival, his rise through the ranks of Poland’s communist film industry, the horrific murder of his second wife Sharon Tate and his subsequent life after the 1977 case are as engaging as any of the director’s films and comparably palpable. The film coyly skims the rape trial and Polanski’s attested gilt and instead creates portrayal of the director that is at both sympathetic and complex. Where Marina Zenovich’s 2008 film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was an excellent investigation into the indignities of the court case, Bouzereau’s film essentially a musing on the man himself.
Perhaps the most lagging element of the film is the interviewer. An obvious supporter of Polanski, Braunsberg does little more than set the director up to tell the more tragic tales from his life. Interestingly, Braunsberg was the producer of the film and unfortunately his affection for the director is transparent, as the film reads more like a plea to clear his friend’s name than an account into one of the most diverging figures in motion pictures. The dialogue between the two runs seamlessly, but seems to lack any luster or accountability on interviewer’s part, ultimately leaving the film to play out more like a Lifetime documentary on the director’s life than on the aftereffects of the 1977 case that Braunsberg is so clearly trying to erase.
With all this being said, the film’s closed environment of two friends talking is nonetheless candid and equally engaging, while the insights into some of Polanski’s more memorable films is engrossing for any fan of the filmmaker’s work.
Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir is in Australian cinemas from 21 February through Regency Films.
