SOURCE: Gritten, David. “On Location in Exile.” Los Angeles Times (15 December 1991): 7C, 88, 90-1.

In the following essay, Gritten comments on the explicit sexual content in Bitter Moon and discusses the film with Polanski and his actors.

Roman Polanski is on the run. Here he is at the Studios Billancourt on the banks of the Seine, an impish figure in a floppy beige sweater, jeans and sneakers, dashing from his office up flights of stairs to lunch in the studio restaurant overlooking the river. Here he hurriedly tears at an artichoke before literally sprinting down to the set of his latest movie, Bitter Moon. He immediately takes charge, commanding dozens of extras to move this way, then that, lunging and gesticulating all the while. It's exhausting just watching him.

Polanski is 58, though he has the energy of a man 20 years younger. It may be that he feels the need...