Luna amarga

This movie, despite what many reviewers seem to think, is about the differences between men and women with respect to sex and love. Whether it is with Oscar and Mimi's intense, wild, no holds barred relationship, or with boring, bland Nigel and Fiona.

Generally speaking, men can have sex with any amount of women, in any way or intensity. If she is up for it, chances are we will be too. Women on the other hand, require more of an emotional connection to the men they sleep with. The need to develop trust and comfort before completely letting go.

Oscar is the ultimate poon hound and became instantly infatuated with Mimi. They start with a normal passionate relationship, but ultimately, the excitement wears off. This happens in any and every relationship. They hike up the intensity by getting into bondage, S&M, etc. All the while, Oscar is all to aware, they are heading for the their peak and once it hits the top, it is only down hill from there.

The thing is, for the man in this case, it is only about the sexual passion. The woman is truly in love and the sex is the connection to her man. Even when the sexual excitement wears off, Mimi is still in love.

So, enter the conflict. Oscar is done, wants out. Mimi can't handle it and doesn't understand why he could possibly not love her the way she loves him. He tries to be compassionate and break up but she refuses to be let go, ultimate agreeing to be his slave just to stay near him.

This story is being told to a couple who have also been together for 7 years and are off to reignite their marriage. I believe that the same factors are in play with the stuffy British couple, Nigel and Fiona but only in a far more repressed manner. He's bored because he and his wife are doing the "normal" thing. No wild, kinky sex for them. But the emotion of love is there. If a couple is going to stay together forever, they simply have to get over the fact that physical passion is fleeting and if the bond of love is strong on both sides, they can make it work. Nigel isn't clear on this until the climactic ending.

This commentary isn't so much on the details of the plot, but what I believe the movie is trying to get across. Read the other posts for more details, but to understand what the movie is saying, understand that sex is sex for men and sex is love for women.

The British Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) are celebrating the seventh anniversary of their marriage in a cruise to Istanbul and Bombay. While in the trip, the American cripple and frustrated writer Oscar (Peter Coyote) gets close to Nigel, and invites him to listen to his unconventional love and hate story with his French wife Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner). Oscar tells how he met Mimi in Paris and all their relationship, including details of their sexual life, along the past years. Meanwhile, Nigel feels a great attraction for the sexy and gorgeous Mimi, in a story with tragic consequences.

'Bitter Moon' has been released in Brazil on DVD this week, and yesterday I watched it for the fifth or sixth time, since it is one of my favorites movies ever. This story, about relationship, moral, hypocrisy, behavior, love and hate, fascinates me and shakes my emotions. I really believe that 'Bitter Moon', Peter Coyote and Emmanuelle Seigner have been not nominated to the Oscar because of the problems of Roman Polanski with the American Justice. Emmanuelle Seigner has her best role and performance in his career playing Mimi, an adorable French woman, very much in love with Oscar, who poisons and destroys her. Their love increases, reaches the top and crosses all the boundaries of a sexual relationship, including those 'accepted by a moralist and hypocrite society' (represented by Nigel), questioning how long a love can last, making Oscar bored of Mimi. The problem is that their relationship was supported by sex only, without friendship and respect, basic parameters for a long-term everyday life of a married couple. Hugh Grant is perfect in the role of a typical British man and symbol of a hypocrite society. And Kristin Scott Thomas has a minor, but very important part in the plot, playing a sexually repressed woman due to the behavior of her husband, who released the chains of her repression. The wonderful music of Vangelis and a soundtrack of nice songs, which includes a Brazilian pop song, conclude this masterpiece. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): 'Lua de Fel' ('Bitter Moon')

Every man should watch this film, it is a Polanski masterpiece. The parts are wonderfully played and the script is menacingly accurate. Why it didn't get greater exposure at the time or since baffles me, particularly as two of the principle characters have since become "famous" , Hugh Grant and Kristan Scott Thomas.

Most men will empathise with the morality or lack of in this confused relationship between an older man obsessed with his sexual object in the form of the stunning French actress, and her adoration for him. The haunting reality is that for so many the lack of depth in a relationship is frightening once the sexual desire diminishes. An awesome film 10 out of 10.

The film begins with the camera focused on the sea and the waves, and the music with the piano playing to good effect, then an increasingly enlarging zooming shot of a porthole. Then to the cruise liner where the four main characters are based. It is a story narrated and told by Oscar, played by Peter Coyote, who is wheelchair-bound, to Nigel, played by Hugh Grant, a man he meets on the cruise. Nigel is intrigued by an entwining and serpentine tale Oscar tells him, and so are we, and even though it starts to sound incredulous, he has to return to Oscar's quarters to hear more. The tale is so engrossing because it concerns Oscar's beautiful, sultry and seductive wife, Mimi, played mesmerisingly by Emmanuelle Seigner. Oscar is entranced at first with her and delves into all kinds of sexual games, then his passion for her begins to subside and he rejects her and leaves her alone on a plane. All the while Nigel's wife (Kristin Scott-Thomas) is becoming disillusioned with Nigel's fascination with Mimi and Oscar. I do not want to unveil anymore, just to implore you to watch this film and let it mesmerise you, like it did me. I felt as though I had to keep watching and somehow I did not want to leave and let go of it until the end.

Roman Polanski again explores the depths of the human psyche in Bitter Moon, a magnificent epic tale of obsessive lust and the oh-so-familiar winding course of a passionate romance gone sour.

Bitter Moon centers around a familiar Polanski theme, that we are capable of being both torturer and victim, and usually both simultaneously. For anyone who doubts the validity of much of the past century of French intellectual thought, from the likes of Andre Gide, Foucault, and others, see this movie. For anyone who has been in a painful twisted relationship, see this movie. You will understand it. Some of it might be hard to stomach but that is the nature of truly great filmmaking.

A beautifully crafted movie, almost lyrical at times, Bitter moon is set in contemporary Paris but is told in a series of long complex flashbacks superbly narrated by Oscar (a terrific Peter Coyote) to Nigel (Hugh Grant as the usual British prat), both passengers on a cruise ship to India. Nigel and his wife Fiona, played by Kirsten Scott-Thomas, are on a holiday to enliven a stable but stale marriage. The couples become embroiled through the lurid tale of Oscar and Mimi's (Emmanuelle Seigner) love affair. Emmanuelle, Polanski's real-life wife, is superb and her incredible performance takes her from sumptuous beauty to complete wreck, a performance that deserves far more praise than was received. The lack of attention to her performance in this movie is no doubt due to the notoriety in the puritanical American press of her husband.

As a whole, Bitter Moon may not be Polanski's best film but some periods of the movie represent his very best work. Throughout, limits are pushed to the brink of tastelessness but Polanski masterfully pulls back just in time. The direction is complex and highly sophisticated and the movie arouses a range of emotions from dread to empathy to disgust to hilarity. The story line is far too complicated to synopsize appropriately in this review. Bitter moon is a great film, one of this reviewer's top 10 for the 1990s. Another must see! A word of caution, however, Bitter Moon is not a good date movie.