Welcome to a palace where the absurd and the ridiculous join forces in a masquerade of vanity and lunacy, and you’ve got Roman Polanski's The Palace (2023)—an exquisite blend of a freak show and a vanity fair, served in one befuddling, glittery cocktail. The rating is unfairly low, probably still suffering from the lingering shadow of Polanski's exile from polite society. Yet, here we are, with a cast that’s somehow decent despite the madness, with Oliver Masucci shining brightly amidst the chaos.
Now, you’d think that with three people working on the script, including Polanski himself, they’d have cooked up something spectacular. But no, the film stumbles to an anti-climactic ending so baffling, you might wonder if they collectively misplaced the plot. One critic labeled it "One of the most egregious film-making failures of the year, possibly even the decade." The usual suspects—the Guardian, the Evening Standard, and the Telegraph—joined in the chorus of disdain. Meanwhile, Venice Film Festival attendees must have been in a particularly forgiving mood, giving the film a 3-minute standing ovation. Perhaps they were just grateful it ended.
The ever-thriving "satire on the ultra-rich" subgenre, already bursting with gems like "Triangle of Sadness", "Infinity Pool", and "The Menu", now welcomes "The Palace" into its fold. But instead of biting wit, we get a New Year’s Eve gathering of garish stereotypes at the Gstaad Palace luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, of course, but not in the way you'd hope.
We’re introduced to a parade of characters so outrageous, they could only have been conceived in a fever dream—or perhaps after one too many absinthes. There’s Bongo, the aging porn star with, umm professional technical difficulties; a Marquise (Fanny Ardant) with an incontinent chihuahua who moonlights as a caviar cannon; and John Cleese as an 87-year-old Texan millionaire determined to outlive his heart with a bottle of Viagra and a 22-year-old wife. If this sounds like the setup for a joke, it is. But the punchline never quite lands.
Then there's Mickey Rourke as Bill Crush, a businessman with a complexion rivaling a sunburnt carrot, and Joaquim de Almeida as Dr. Lima, surrounded by an army of Botox survivors who look like they’ve been sculpted out of wax. The film even throws in some Russian mobsters and a timid accountant who promptly faceplants into a model’s cleavage after one ill-advised puff of a joint. Highbrow cinema this is not.
As the film inches towards midnight and the dreaded Y2K apocalypse, the hotel’s staff, led by the ever-capable Hansueli (played brilliantly by Masucci), scramble to keep the wheels from falling off this rapidly derailing train. They deal with everything from penguins in the hotel lobby to flooded toilets, all while the film desperately tries to wring some humor from the absurdity.
But when the clock strikes twelve… nothing. The grand finale is more of a confused whimper, leaving you to wonder if the real punchline was that the writers themselves got lost somewhere between Act II and Act III. For all its manic energy, "The Palace" ends up feeling like a Hallmark Christmas special, if Hallmark suddenly decided to embrace the bizarre.
To truly appreciate The Palace, you’ll need more than just an open mind—you’ll need to be absolutely plastered. Stock up on booze, light up some weed, and embrace the mindless state required to endure Polanski’s wild antics. I’m convinced the writers were three sheets to the wind when they came up with this, and that a hefty chunk of the budget went to keeping the cast well-lubricated during shooting—because it’s hard to believe anyone could deliver these gloriously clichéd, nonsensical lines while sober. It’s a movie best enjoyed when you’re too inebriated to care about the lack of coherence—or anything else, for that matter.
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