Film viewers may not consider Bitter Moon a great movie, but for me it's one of Roman Polanski's most enjoyable movies. It's a very eclectic movie, grabbing something from many genres at the same time - comedy, thriller, romance, drama - and molding them into a tightly-plotted, plausible story.<br /><br />Hugh Grant (in arguably the only serious role of his career) and Kristin Scott Thomas play a Nigel and Fiona, a British couple travelling aboard a cruise ship to India. They're a couple with difficulties and hope that the holiday will spice up their life a bit.<br /><br />But they have the unfortunate luck of meeting Oscar and Mimi, an awkward couple. The temptress Mimi flirts with Nigel, much to Fiona's disgust. And the wheelchair-bound Oscar sees in Nigel the perfect listener to his life story.<br /><br />Much of the movie's narrative involves Oscar, a failed American writer, telling Nigel how he met Mimi in Paris and how they became caught in a love-hate sexual relationship of escalating sexuality, perversion, and viciousness. It's a story that plumbs the depths of human depravity, man's ability to inflict pain on others; but at the same time it's about the thing that makes life worth living: love.<br /><br />Oscar's narrative reveals the lives of two people completely exhausted by their lust until their desire turns to hatred and hatred to pleasure in hurting each other. When Oscar gets tired of Mimi, he tries to get rid of her, pregnant and without means. Her revenge, taking advantage of an accident that cripples him, is just as cruel. And in this game of cruelty it becomes obvious these two have no one else but each other. Love has never been more paradoxical.<br /><br />Peter Coyote and Emmanuelle Seigner dominate this movie. Coyote especially plays his ruthless character without any self-pity, without justifications, and yet still manages to instill a great deal of humanity in him.<br /><br />Visually speaking, Bitter Moon is not the masterwork that was Tess or Chinatown. It's a more conventional movie - technically speaking anyway; no mainstream movie would go near the subject matter of this movie - that tells an extraordinary story in very simple terms. I wouldn't call that bad, but Polanski can do better. But in terms of exposing the dark soul of man, it's vintage Polanski.