THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994 TAG: 9406240118
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: 940625 LENGTH: Medium
It is one of those films that is so over-the-top that it is impossible to take it seriously, but there is never a wink to take us off the hook. We can never be quite sure that this isn't being played seriously. Roman Polanski, the director whose most famous works in this country include the classics ``Rosemary's Baby'' and ``Chinatown,'' teases us by playing every sexual overdose and outlandishly campy moment as if it were great drama.
{REST} The result is a movie that is quite watchable while being outrageous to the point of absurdity.
Peter Coyote, a fine actor who seems always to be near stardom, plays an unsuccessful American writer. He and his flagrantly sexy ``wife'' (played by Polanski's real-life wife, Emmanuelle Seigner) are on board a luxury liner in the Black Sea when they meet an oh-so-proper British couple.
The Brits are played by Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott-Thomas. Grant, who played in ``Four Weddings and a Funeral'' and ``Sirens,'' is this year's most prominent new male star. The couple is in the seventh year of a marriage that appears more polite than passionate.
Coyote recognizes their weakness and begins spinning detailed accounts of the degrading and humiliating sexual history of his relationship with Seigner. The flashbacks are narrated in purple prose and spare nothing.
First he degrades her and then, when he is wheelchair-bound, she degrades him. This isn't sweetness and light. Grant is intrigued by the outlandish lifestyle. Eventually, his proper wife also takes improper interest in the bizarre twosome. There's a mixture of humor and horror.
``Bitter Moon'' is one of the funniest movies released in some time, but its humor is not of the feel-good variety. It suggests that passion leads to degradation and humiliation. Polanski, whose legal problems have barred him from this country since 1978, seems to be saying that dissolution and antagonism are the ultimate result of relationships in which someone must be the winner.
See ``Bitter Moon'' at your own risk, but once you're into it, you won't look away.
The only solution is to laugh. There are plenty of opportunities in this outrageous erotic comedy.
by CNB