Bitter Moon will never be forgotten Polish director Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon is a controversial piece of filmmaking that people are either going to love or hate. When the film was released to cinemas, it bombed spectacularly and the reasons for the negative publicity are not difficult to comprehend. Many of the movie scenes are uncomfortable and painful to watch. Yet I found myself returning to Bitter Moon for a second, third, fourth, and even fifth viewing.
What draws me to the material? I think part of the allure of Bitter Moon is that the movie is shrouded in mystery even at the end. The film opens with Nigel (Hugh Grant) and Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) walking arm-in-arm on a cruise together. Suddenly, the couple's lives take an unexpected turn when they encounter Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) who suffers from sea sickness. They help her get better and a brief conversation ensues. Fiona says that he is travelling to Bombay, while Mimi says that he is travelling "further, much further" as ominous music plays in the background. A part of me likes to think that Mimi is referring to the afterlife.
The first encounter suggests that there will be more meetings involving Mimi over the course of the film. Sure enough, Nigel sees Mimi again and then he sees her disabled American husband Oscar (Coyote). A man filled with cynicism and bitterness, Oscar convinces Nigel to listen to his story about how he ended up in a relationship with Mimi and then in a wheelchair. The story leaves Niger repelled and captivated at the same time not least of all because Mimi's uninhibited sexuality is used as bait. Oscar knows how to exploit Nigel's weaknesses. On the one hand, Nigel is a prude who proudly declares in one scene "... at least we have some decency" referring to his relationship with his wife. Yet Oscar is shrewd enough to figure out that "decency" is Nigel's problem. Fiona simply cannot compete with Mimi when she is influenced by her husband's prudish nature to conceal her sexuality. At the same time, Nigel is such a hypocrite that (as Oscar predicts) he loses interest in his marriage which "has some decency" and falls for Mimi who has no scruples about parading her sexuality to everyone -- including the captain with the beard.
The great enigma is what are we to make of Oscar's story? The story may be interpreted as a cautionary tale about relationships. Mimi embodies such an irresistible blend of sexuality and innocence that Oscar initially imagines a relationship with her lasting forever, except that it doesn't. Sexual attraction and beauty alone cannot support a relationship, because at some point the novelty starts to wear off. There is a scene midway in the movie where Oscar sits across from Mimi and announces that their relationship is over. When Mimi refuses to leave him, Oscar engages in sadistic behavior which culminates in Mimi having an abortion and being tricked into going on a one-way flight to Martinique. After Mimi is literally out of his life, Oscar has sex with countless women over the course of two years. Crucially none of these women bother to visit him in hospital, after he gets hit by a car. The implication is obvious: the women understand that Oscar might be good for a temporary fling, but he certainly is not worth caring about.
Oscar's harrowing story, however, is open to another interpretation. The cynical American in the wheelchair may be presenting a chronology of a sex game that becomes increasingly violent over the course of the movie. The implication seems to be that Oscar early on is losing interest in normal sexual relations and needs to up the ante. As a result, everything in Oscar's story becomes part of the sex game. There is first love followed by a deliberate razor cut and acts of mild sadomasochism. Then Oscar humiliates, degrades, abuses, and cheats on Mimi because he takes sadistic delight in hurting her. After that, Mimi takes revenge by making him a cripple for life and humiliating him relentlessly. On the cruise, the sex game goes up another level and involves Nigel and Fiona.
There are a number of clues indicating that Oscar, Mimi, Nigel, and Fiona are involved in a bizarre quadrangle with an unforeseen outcome. To begin with, Mimi plays a prank on Nigel by luring him into her bedroom. Nigel kisses a hand which he assumes belongs to Mimi. The light turns on and Nigel, to his horror, realizes that he has kissed Oscar's hand. Near the end, Nigel asks Mimi, "You mean it's just a game?" to which Mimi replies, "Did I say it wasn't?" Two other clues can be found in Oscar's narrative. When one of the sadomasochistic games fails to generate any excitement, Oscar says "Not anymore" to announce that the game is over. If the viewer pays close attention, Oscar has the same refrain ("Not anymore") at the end of the film when he ends the latest sex game in a shocking way. Another clue in the story is Mimi is never arrested by the police for brutally assaulting Oscar and making him a cripple. The implication here is that the fatal assault is part of the game.
When the final credits arrive, I was still debating over which interpretation best describes Oscar's harrowing story. Was he explaining the reasons for the breakdown of a passion-filled relationship and what those reasons say about the participants? Was he narrating a sex game that was becoming increasingly bizarre and dangerous and ended up entangling Nigel and Fiona in a black widow's web of deceit and death? Are both interpretations key to understanding how Oscar and Mimi's romance went down this journey to ruin? Was Mimi's claim that she was travelling "further, much further" a suggest that the final destination of their journey was the afterlife and not the final destination of the cruise? What do the strange and increasingly bizarre sex games say about Oscar and Mimi as damaged souls and do we really understand these two people? Asking these questions and debating the answers is part of the fun of watching Bitter Moon. When the movie reached its conclusion, it was unspectacular but I could not care less. The point of Bitter Moon is taking the labyrinthian journey through strange and dangerous sexual terrain, not the ending. As a result, I think it is the enigma surrounding the movie and its characters that explains the film's enduring appeal. Despite Bitter Moon being a commercial bomb and attracting few viewers, film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert praised the movie's daring and pointed out that the subject matter was "alive." I personally consider the movie to be one of Roman Polanski's best, because as much as some of its content is repellant and uncomfortable, I find myself returning to the film again to study the dialog, the construction of individual scenes, the complex and interesting characters, and what the film is saying about sex and relationships.