Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
Director: Marina Zenovich
Classification: 14A
Rating: ** (out of five)

Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired means to critique the media hype and judicial malfeasance that compromised its eponymous subject’s 1977 trial for raping a 13-year old girl — and, it’s implied, left the famed director little choice but to flee to (and remain in) France, where public sympathy (and intractable extradition treaties) are on his side. 

But the film, which caused a sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been showing on HBO, undercuts it lucid central argument — that Polanski was not treated  fairly by the showboating, promise-breaking judge presiding over his case — by attempting to rationalize and downplay the nature of his transgression. It may very well be true that Polanski’s tragic life (he survived the Holocaust as a child and his wife, Sharon Tate, was infamously murdered by the Manson family) influenced his behavior in the 1970s, when he developed a reputation as a womanizer — with a taste for very young women.

And that sort of complex psychology is certainly a viable subject for a documentary. But there’s a sense that Zenovich also thinks that Polanski the great artist and European libertine simply bumped up against a puritanical American culture out to vilify him for having a lust for life. This is a specious argument that’s also flatly insulting to the victim, who (unlike Polanski) does appear onscreen; she may have publically forgiven the director in 1997 after settling a civil suit, but clearly bristles at the notion that she should bear any onus of responsibility for what happened.

That the film is fairly well-made (Zenovich spikes her talking-head assemblage with cleverly chosen clips from Polanski’s best work) doesn’t obscure its problematic approach.