Roman Polanski’s Preposterous 'Based On A True Story'

True story: a great film director has somehow managed to turn a project full of promise into a suffocated, bloated and achingly frustrating thriller. Roman Polanski directs “Based on a True Story” like a man using tweezers to violently pluck the stinger out of a bee that had the potential to produce a glut of sweet, sweet honey, and what’s essentially asked of us as an audience is to watch this poor creature die a slow death right before our eyes. For all the personal controversies that have plagued the iconic director of “Chinatown,”,“Rosemary’s Baby” and “Repulsion,” Polanski incontrovertibly understands the language of cinema well enough to make an amazing film. Granted, he hasn’t made a truly remarkable one in 15 years, since “The Pianist,” but his latest fun-infused theatrical adaptations, “Carnage” and “Venus in Fur,” are nothing to sneeze at and contain symptoms of vitality that are absorbing and intensely entertaining. Delphine de Vigan’s eponymous novel, on which his latest film is based, as adapted by another formidable cinematic talent in Olivier Assayas, has all the knotted fibers of a great Polanski story. Its themes deal with identity-mushing and deranged obsessions before the story turns into a cabin-in-the-woods paranoia thriller a la “Misery.” So, what the hell happened?

READ MORE: First Look At Eva Green & Emmanuelle Seigner In Roman Polanski’s ‘Based On A True Story’

Well, perhaps Polanski doesn’t direct confrontations between two women as well as he directs the male vs. female and male vs. male dynamic so prevalent in his filmography? It’s the story of novelist Delphine (Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s real-life wife and his on-screen accomplice to burning this project to the ground) who suffers from writer’s block and meets the alluring stranger Elle (Eva Green, our savior). Delphine is in the process of writing a new novel, on a subject that distances itself from the autobiographical aspect that has made her previous novel such a big success (it was about her mother, a relationship that’s never explored). But she is paralyzed with her laptop. She keeps running into Elle, who is a huge fan of her work – “It’s as if you were writing it just for me!” – and wants to break her writer’s block by persuading her to write about the “hidden book” she once heard Delphine talk about in an interview.

They exchange numbers and start going for coffee dates. Delphine enjoys Elle’s company because in Elle she’s found a great listener, but this worries Delphine’s boyfriend and book publicist Francois (Vincent Perez) – who conveniently leaves for a three-week tour in the U.S. just as Elle’s deranged familiarity starts to get exposed. Elle herself is a ghostwriter of famous autobiographies, but she seems much more interested in Delphine’s writing. When her latest project falls through, she asks Delphine if she could move into one of the empty rooms of her upscale apartment and, determined to help the struggling author get out of her rut, becomes a pseudo-personal assistant, going so far as imitating her for a scheduled out-of-town university appearance. The relationship between the two starts to get rocky, but then Delphine injures her leg and gets doctor’s orders to rest for four weeks. Together with Elle, they take a break from the urban noise and go to Francois’ bucolic cabin so that Delphine can recover and start writing again. At this point, ‘Based on a True Story’ is meant to kick into a thrilling overdrive, but instead it gets a flat tire and drives off the bridge.

READ MORE: Watch: Video Essay Explores The Tragedy Of Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’

The creepy, stalker-like vibes of Green’s Elle are entertaining enough to watch evolve, but as a character foil to Seigner’s Delphine, the incongruence within ‘True Story’ is grossly felt. This is a combined mistake of the screenplay, which progressively exposes Delphine as a blind and deluded idiot, and Seigner’s forced, transparent and plain awful performance. Ironically enough it was Seigner who brought the project to her husband’s attention, and no other actress was considered for the part, but if you think you’ll see the same kind of vivacious, over-the-top, giddy and sensational performance found in ‘Venus in Fur,’ get ready for a major disappointment. Instead, it’s Green who carries this film on her slender shoulders. Watching her confront a blender with a rolling pin, smoke cigarettes with vicious purpose, and turn wide-eyed bat-shit as she tries to force-feed Delphine soup and hot chocolate is pure genre joy.

Beyond Green’s feline, ferocious turn, however, ‘True Story’ crumbles at the feet of its insipid central character and a third act that robs us of a truly cathartic climax. Polanski can’t find the right balance and tone to translate the blurring of memoir and fiction, nor the coy play with the ambiguity of the narrator’s voice that works so well in de Vigan’s novel. And neither Pawel Edelman’s crystalline cinematography nor Alexander Desplat’s mischievous score can help the film from clumsily plummeting and turning into a faux-Brian De Palma shit show. Watch it for Eva Green’s feline-like acting prowess at playing a venomous femme fatale, if you must, but this fact about Polanski’s latest fiction remains: it’s one of the director’s worst films, if not the worst. You’ll feel like smashing it with a rolling pin after it’s done. [D+]

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