Much talk surrounded Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera’s decision to include Roman Polanski in his festival lineup. The controversy surrounding Polanski is well documented, but Barbera was adamant that the director had atoned for his past sins and that he is “one of the last great masters of European cinema” and “my job is judging the quality of his films”.
Before watching this film, I was with Barbera, but he has done all those in the anti-Polanski camp a favour by screening The Palace, a film so dire that the filmmaker can no longer be defended because of his genius. The backlash from this debacle will reverberate for some time here on the Lido and beyond.
