SOURCE: Graffy, Julian. Review of Bitter Moon, by Roman Polanski. Sight and Sound 2, no. 6 (October 1992): 53-4.

In the following review, Graffy offers a negative assessment of Bitter Moon, calling the film a “lazy male fantasy” that is “shot through with a nasty, prurient misogyny.”

[In Bitter Moon,] Nigel Dobson, a British Eurobond dealer, and Fiona, his wife of seven years, are sailing to Istanbul en route for India. They encounter a beautiful French woman, Mimi, and that night Nigel meets her again, as she dances alone in the ship's bar; later, her crippled American husband, Oscar, takes Nigel to his cabin and begins to tell him their story. … After living in Paris for several years, trying to be a writer, he becomes obsessed by a young woman with whom he has a chance encounter on a bus. Tracking her down, he finds her working as a waitress (though...