Roman Polanski's "Bitter Moon"

A couple of years ago I sat in the first lecture of a course about Roman Polanski in the Tel-Aviv university, given by a much beloved but very pompous professor. He began by listing all of Polanski's films, and I fell into his silly little trap by raising my hand and pointing out that he had left out "Bitter Moon". His well-rehearsed answer was "I've left it out, because it isn't worth talking about, and I'd rather forget that it was ever made".
Then he spent a month talking about "The Tenant".

"Bitter Moon" - in French, "Lunes de Fiel", meaning "Moon of Gall", as opposed to "Lunes de Miel" which means "Moon of Honey" i.e. "Honeymoon" - is one of the most underrated films in history. Just as the wonderful "Starship Troopers" is mistaken for a cheesy action film, when it is in fact an earth-shattering social commentary, so "Bitter Moon" is mistaken for a romantic drama gone wrong, when it is in fact a grotesque indictment of the modern ideas of romantic love.

As I read some of the reviews for this film, my hands start to shake with anger. The consensus seems to be that Polanski started out with the intention to describe a moving love affair, then got lost in his stupid desire to create provocations by inserting as much soft-core porn as he could get away with. They mock the cliche lines that Peter Coyote's character speaks with a straight face: "Have you ever truly idolized a woman? Nothing can be obscene in such love. Everything that occurs in between it becomes a sacrament." and nobody knows what the hell Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas' characters are doing there. Roger Ebert is the only one who seems to have some kind of idea of what this film is really about. So, listen carefully, I'm only going to explain this once:

Oscar and Mimi are living out the romantic fantasy of romantic Parisian romance that we've been conditioned to want and fantasize about. He is a brooding American writer who lives in Paris and expects to become the next Henry Miller or Ernest Hemingway. He meets a divine creature on the bus and falls in love at first sight, but doesn't get to speak to her. After looking for her for months and almost giving up, he finally runs into her by mistake, and this "written in the stars" affair can finally begin. Of course she remembers him, of course she has also fallen in love with him at first sight. As they crash into each-other's arms with phrases like "I might have been Adam with the taste of apple fresh in my mouth. I was looking at all the beauty in the world, embodied in a single female form.", they reach the point where Meg Ryan films usually end, and step into uncharted territory. What happens next, or rather what doesn't happen, is that they never reach the comfortable, "boring" stage of the love affair. They never learn to enjoy eating breakfast together without tearing their clothes off and licking milk off each-other. They giggle and kiss while shopping for sex toys, but they will never giggle and kiss while shopping for groceries.

And so the grotesque part of the story begins - how far can you go on desire alone? At what point does sexual exploration become a silly cartoon? What do you do when a person kneels at your feet and tells you "You can do anything you want to me, just don't send me away"? How does it feel to go in an instant from being all-powerful to being completely powerless? And after all the battles have been won and lost, how do you spend eternity? Perhaps by poisoning the lives of a young couple you meet along the way, by mocking their seemingly boring and lustless relationship, and forcing your personal hell on them.

Just like Mimi and Oscar's love, Roman Polanski the masterpiece director is gone now, and it's too late to hug his ankles and cry "Please don't go, I'll do anything!". Instead, we can quote another cliche and say "We'll always have Paris", we'll always have "Chinatown", "Rosemary's Baby", and "Bitter Moon".