Movie Review: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
ROUNDUP REVIEW: ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED
(4 stars)
All Roman Polanski has to do is show up on-screen, as he did playing a French policeman in "Rush Hour 3," and he brings with him a world of weaselly self-amusement and criminally loose morals. That's his reputation. And that reputation, along with the knowable facts of what he did to 13-year-old Samantha Gailey Geimer in Jack Nicholson's house after photographing the underage Hollywood hopeful topless in a hot tub, is the heart of Marina Zenovich's remarkable documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."
Having already aired on HBO, the film - one of the best of the year - now makes its way into limited theatrical release. Zenovich doesn't settle for a single cliche or generalization or facile set of judgments regarding what Polanski did in 1977, why he fled America in 1978 never to return and the endlessly debated particulars of the crime he committed (he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor).
What's amazing here is the wider panorama of Hollywood society and mores. The judge presiding over the Polanski case was Laurence J. Rittenband, celebrity-obsessed and hilariously conscious of his place in the show-business sun. Now retired, prosecutor Roger Gunson and defense attorney Douglas Dalton guide us through the labyrinth of the case. Zenovich relies (a touch obviously) on clips from Polanski's work, from "Knife in the Water" to "Rosemary's Baby" to "Chinatown," along with a fascinating allegorical snippet from a short film, "The Fat and the Lean" (1961), made before he became the toast of swinging London, before he became the husband of Sharon Tate, before Tate's grisly murder at the hands of the Charles Manson cultists.
On camera, Geimer - now a 45-year-old mother of three - offers her guarded side of the story, with more empathy for Polanski than you'd expect. Is she telling the whole truth? Could anyone entirely bury her anger about the media circus she had to endure all those years ago? This is a superb picture, sharp, open-minded, wised-up and cinematically accomplished. I wonder if any man could've handled the Polanski enigma with the same ironic intelligence Zenovich has.
- Michael Phillips
Running time: 1:39. Opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre. MPAA rating: Not rated (parents cautioned for sexuality and language).
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