SOURCE: Rainer, Peter. “Moon a Cruise Full of Eroticism.” Los Angeles Times (18 March 1994): F1, F8, F12.

In the following review, Rainer comments that Bitter Moon is disappointingly conventional in its attempts to shock the spectator, observing that the film is “like a dirty joke that somehow got lost in the translation.”

This much can be said for Roman Polanski's carnal hoot-fest Bitter Moon—it keeps you wondering from scene to scene if the director has gone bonkers. No doubt a lot of the lunacy is intentional, but it's still lunacy.

And not terribly enjoyable lunacy either. The film plays like a dirty joke that somehow got lost in the translation. Polanski, with his screenwriters Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn, must have figured that an obsessive sadomasochistic love triangle (or is it a love parallelogram?) would work better if the whole thing was tarted up and fatuous—equal parts...