Not a masterpiece
Being an accomplished director certainly has its perks. Being 80 years old and making an ambitious project – in french, to top it all off – inevitably seems to make critics go nuts. At least in Germany, the press loves the latest work by Polanski by and large.
Masterpiece is a term used lightly in this day and age. This film is no such thing. But it is entertaining all the way through. And that is a remarkable accomplishment in itself, if you know about the source material.
Seigner and Amalric are both outstanding. It's nice to see them again together after "Le scaphandre et le papillon". And just in case anyone questioned why the directors wife got cast – she is absolutely gorgeous in her performance and even exceeds the one by Mathieu Amalric, whose is a little too theatrical at times.
But with a movie like this, you never know what's intentional or not. It has multiple layers (one being the fact that Amalric is the perfect stand-in for Mr. Polanski) but is still very straightforward – whether that's a flaw or not is up to the viewer to decide. Polanski has no intention to be smarter than his audience. Any experienced movie and/or theatre goer should be able to figure out from the get go how this will turn out. The joy is the experience watching it unfold.
The direction is flawless, what struck me most was the feeling to see one continuous scene. Of course there are cuts, but you have to make yourself look for them, which is the biggest compliment you can make. The camera is floating around the stage, its actors and the theatre as a whole as if the whole place was a stage (and in many ways, it is).
On the downside, you never really get the feeling to watch something worthwhile. It's good for what it is, actually it's great at that. But ultimately there is not much to make you want to watch it all again.
Go see it and have fun. It's thoroughly entertaining. But don't expect too much from it.
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A year is a long time.
Not so long. Just once around the sun.