Roman Polanski’s Dreadful Hotel Comedy Makes The Controversial Director A Laughing Stock – Venice Film Festival

https://deadline.com/2023/09/the-palace-review-roman-polanski-john-cleese-mickey-rourke-1235535126/

The setting is The Palace, a plush Alpine hideaway where the jet set of Europe are gathering to see in the year 2000. There are fears that the Y2K bug will bring the world to a standstill, and perhaps even destroy it completely, but the unflappable maitre d’hôtel Hansueli Kopf (Oliver Masucci) insists everything will be fine. The aim is simply to satisfy the influx of rich and gaudy guests who will “stuff themselves with caviar to their hearts’ content” and drink champagne until it “gushes from their ears”.

He’s not wrong. His vulgar clientele includes a gaggle of ladies who lunch whose facelifted faces become grotesquely coquettish when vying for the attentions of a famous plastic surgeon. There’s a porn star called Bongo who once insured his cock for $5m; a nymphomaniac French marquise whose dog Mr. Toby refuses to shit in the snowy outdoors; and a band of Russian gangsters who arrive with their entourage of hookers and bodyguards only to find that Boris Yeltsin has handed over their country to a young up-and-comer called Vladimir Putin.

None of this, however, can prepare you for the horror of the scenes involving John Cleese as 87-year-old US tycoon Arthur William Dallas III, who is celebrating a year of marriage to his 22-year-old whiyaat-traaaash wife Magnolia. Spoiler alert: he will die while they’re having sex, which will leave Magnolia penniless if, as per the terms of their pre-nup, his death is reported before midnight strikes on their first anniversary. This leads to an excruciating sequence that makes Weekend at Bernie’s look like the wittiest jape of the season, as Kopf and his staff bundle the corpse into a wheelchair, cigar in hand, while the other guests are distracted by a lavish firework display.