It’s perhaps unsurprising that the first film fugitive Roman Polanski has made since narrowly escaping an extradition order is based around the themes of confinement, hypocrisy and the liberal agenda. Based on Yasmina Reza’s hugely successful play, Carnage sees “touchy-feely” liberal couple the Longstreets (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly), invite corporate cynics the Cowans (Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz) to their home to discuss a violent incident between their sons. Shot in real time, the film charts just how quickly the veneer of etiquette can crack, quickly becoming a bitter, scathing and razor-sharp comedy.
Though it was Foster and Winslet who scooped Golden Globe nominations for their roles as a smug, highly-strung do-gooder and a polished but neglected wife respectively, it’s Waltz who really shines. A blunt pharmaceutical rep with questionable morals, he openly admits that his son is “a maniac” and that he feels that the meeting is largely pointless. His constant answering of phonecalls is repeatedly singled out as evidence of rudeness, but as Foster’s sermonising transforms into drunken sobbing, Winslet becomes an attacking, vomiting wreck and Reilly’s happy-go-lucky cloak falls to reveal an emasculated misogynist, it quickly becomes clear that it’s constant repression, not occasional rudeness, that makes Neanderthals of us all.
As pseudo-intellectual arguments about human nature transcend loyalties and become an individual’s game of survival of the wittiest, the clever but convoluted script often betrays its theatrical roots, as does the claustrophobic setting of the Longstreets’ artful apartment. Still, Polanski, who loves (and lives in) worlds of confinement and limits, shoots it well. A very funny nod to Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel sees the Cowans repeatedly try to leave but fail, perhaps because this uncensored screaming match may be the first genuine communication any of the characters have had in years.
Though occasionally over-written, Carnage proves a wickedly funny and - refreshingly concise - fly-on-the-wall peek into a gathering you’d never want to attend.