moondog-14

Starts very promisingly then ends nowhere. a big disappointment after "The Adjuster", "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter". Bob Hoskins should really leave the accents alone. He's a London boy and that's all he can do.

Best bits are the first part of the film which is very atmospheric, the excellent use of Birmingham locations which are just as awful as in the film and Felicia, who is lovely. The cookery scenes aren't bad either.

Hitchcock would have shown us behind the locked door. I suspect that Egoyen did not know what we would find.

Bitter Moon is a good bad film. One of those movies where you cannot tell whether the acting and story are good or really bad. In a funny way this makes it all very watchable although there are several strikes against Roman Polanski for putting his wife Emanuelle Seigner through her paces in a variety of sex positions and humiliations. This comes from the Nick Roeg/Theresa Russell school of film making.

Excellent is Seigner who is beautiful in a very "Betty Blue" French sort of way. Kristen Scott Thomas is also in it and she is of course attractive in an English sort of way which is not quite the same thing.

If this review seems sex obsessed it's because the movie is but it's also very funny. Peter Coyote is great once he gets in a wheelchair. He should get an oscar for his Gauloise smoking alone. Hugh Grant on the other hand should be shot for his gibbering performance.