How do you remember New Year's Eve 1999? I remember a tremendous fireworks display in London, pushing through crowds of revellers, and getting kissed by some strange woman. The world didn't end, except insofar as the machines took over our lives. We all gradually disappeared into the vortex of virtual space. Oh well, whayyagonnado?
I find much of Polanski's oeuvre intriguing, weirdly funny, frightful, dramatic, even beautiful at times. It has to be admitted, he has a peculiar sense of humour. Cul-de-Sac; The Fearless Vampire Killers; What?; Pirates: these films are weird comedies all. They can raise a smile but rarely provoke actual laughter. Carnage does succeed in tickling one's ribs, but Polanski didn't write that one. The Palace has to be bracketed with those other old peculiars.
This film reunited Polanski with his collaborator from 1962's breakthrough, Knife in the Water, screenwriter Jerzy Skolimowski. Knife has three people stuck on a boat. The Palace has a crowd of grotesques in a Swiss hotel, up in the mountains. It's Y2K party time and a disciplined hotel staff must contend with a roving penguin, an incontinent little dog (one of those breeds that looks more like a rat), a squabble of shrieking Russian bimbos, a stretch of old mutton sporting some of the worst facelifts imaginable (think Jack Nicholson in Batman), shady businessmen, a gazillionnaire with his gold-digging BBW, a faded Italian stallion, and well, other various ones, twos and threes. All we need is the right kind of catalyst for a wild farce, upstairs downstairs, the vulgar rich and the exasperated poor.
Do we get such a farce? No, not really.
The Palace is much like the turn of the millennium was, a bit of a party but not really that big of a deal. The cast do as well as they can, and credit to the actors for playing such bizarre personages. John Cleese earns one laugh for his comical facial expression. The problem is that there isn't enough story to make this truly memorable. It doesn't have the whimsical eccentricity of The Grand Budapest Hotel. The grotesquerie is just, well, gross, most of the time. At other times, dare I say, a bit boring? But the biggest problem, I suppose, is comprehending the motives of Skolimowski & Polanski for making The Palace. Why did they want to?
As I say, it reminded me of Eurotrash, the TV series, obliquely, because of the emphasis on trashy people, but at least we had fun watching that vulgar show, back then...(sound of harp glissandi) all those years ago...
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