“The Palace”, Polanski’s latest film announced for May 15 in theaters

The controversial American director’s latest film is a sketch comedy that crudely mocks the excesses of the era.

A small distributor, specializing in heritage cinema, announced on Tuesday that it planned to release in French cinemas on May 15 the latest film by Roman Polanski, a filmmaker who has become a symbol of #MeToo and to whom a large part of the profession has filmed the back.

“No one wanted the film”explained to AFP Sébastien Tiveyrat, the director of the company Swashbuckler Films, who requested an operating visa for France. “It’s only cinema that interests me, not the rest, and Roman Polanski is a great filmmaker”he added.

This distributor must now find theaters ready to program this film, presented in the absence of the director at the last Venice Film Festival. It received a frosty reception there, and was released in Italy, but not in the United States.

The excesses of the time

The Palacefilmed in Gstaad in Switzerland, is intended to be a sketch comedy in a luxury hotel, on New Year’s Eve 2000. In the cast, Fanny Ardant, John Cleese or Mickey Rourke, but no popular star.

The film aims to laugh at the excesses of the time, with a gallery of outraged characters: Russian oligarchs, unbearable billionaires, a nymphomaniac client, a lecherous plumber. Not to mention a dog, which will end up mating with a penguin.

This comedy with a budget of 21 million euros has little to do with the great films of Polanski, multi-awarded author of 23 feature films including The pianiston the Shoah, or the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby.

The 90-year-old filmmaker has become for some the symbol of the impunity of perpetrators of sexual violence in the cinema. He has seen a large part of the profession turn their backs on him since the #MeToo wave, then the 2020 César ceremony, where the César for best achievement for I accuse was awarded to him in his absence.

Called to appear in 2025

He has always refuted the accusations that have emerged in recent years, for facts which allegedly took place around the 1970s. On the legal front, he was arrested in 1977 in the United States where he lived and accused of having drugged and raped Samantha Gailey (later Geimer), 13 years old.

He spent 42 days in prison before being released and then fleeing to Paris. He has since been the subject of an international arrest warrant from the American justice system.

The filmmaker is called to appear in California in 2025, during a civil trial for rape of a minor in 1973, charges he contests “with the greatest firmness”according to his Parisian lawyer.