I kid, I kid. For better or worse, Roman Polanski has once again become a more or less normal figure in the world of international cinema, as the NYFF’s selection of “Carnage” made clear. His 2009 arrest in Switzerland ultimately came to nothing, after the Swiss authorities declined to extradite him to the United States to face sentencing for his 1978 rape conviction. Everyone at that Manhattan screening understood that he wouldn’t be there, and indeed it seems highly unlikely that Polanski, who is now 78, will ever set foot on American soil again.

You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud, however, to deduce that the master stylist who made “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown” has unfinished business with America. Polanski’s last film, released shortly after his Swiss arrest, was “The Ghost Writer,” a clever, twisty thriller that used the North Sea coast of Germany (somewhat implausibly) to stand in for its Martha’s Vineyard setting. Its story was based on a Robert Harris novel, but you couldn’t help noticing that it was about a raffish international playboy forced into foreign exile by legal problems and a secret from his 1970s past.

“Carnage” contains no particular echoes of Polanski’s biography, but it’s definitely a work of Euro-American schizophrenia. It replicates the Brooklyn Heights or Cobble Hill apartment of Michael and Penelope Longstreet (Reilly and Foster, respectively) on a French studio set, complete with digital inserts of the Brooklyn waterfront seen through the windows. The film’s funniest performance comes from long-faced Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, an Oscar winner for “Inglourious Basterds,” who’s utterly convincing as Alan Cowan, a scumbag lawyer who’s managing some kind of P.R. crisis for a pharmaceutical client, via smartphone, even as he’s making chitchat with the Longstreets. It’s Alan who tells Reilly’s Mike, after their perfunctory meeting over coffee has degenerated into booze, vomiting and brutality, “I believe in the god of carnage.”

Alan’s cellphone, along with Penny Longstreet’s beloved art books, are among the totems destroyed by the god of carnage in this tightly structured comedy of manners, which is roughly one part “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and one part Luis Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel.” Although Reza’s script (co-written with Polanski) stops short of full-on surrealism or science fiction, it begins to seem as if Alan and his prissy, uptight wife, Nancy (Kate Winslet), actually can’t leave the Longstreets’ apartment, or at least not until these couples’ collision of class and sensibility reaches some resolution.
If Alan revels in privilege, power and lack of principle and Nancy is the model of upper-crust decorum — at least until she violates it egregiously — Mike and Penny are meant, on the surface, to seem more middle-class and “relatable.” He’s a contractor who made good, and she’s a highly strung, oversensitive liberal type who is concerned about Tibet and the Sudan and has some vaguely arty career. It’s one of Foster’s best and funniest performances, even if her transformation, like everybody else’s, is telegraphed in advance. Penny’s supposed sensitivity and concern for others of course conceals a near-psychotic madness (as well as an unexpected appetite for alcohol early in the day).

Seeing these four actors launching Reza’s zingers at each other at high speed is pretty much worth the price of admission all by itself, and one thing you always know about Polanski is that he won’t waste your time. I don’t actually think “Carnage” is an especially memorable film, but it’s brilliantly shot and executed, traversing the bland, upper-middle spaces of the Longstreets’ apartment with masterful economy. In a holiday season crammed with promiscuously wasteful two-hour-plus movies that seek to milk every possible emotion from you, this one keeps you laughing for 79 minutes and sends you home. But as you’re pulling your coat back on, don’t miss the tiny but important coda that happens behind the closing credits.

“Carnage” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, with wider release to follow.

On its item description, the auction house — which also currently has a few tufts of Michael Jackson’s hair “collected from the room he was staying in at the Carlyle Hotel” going for a cool thousand bucks, — claims the bauble is Sharon Tate’s “engagement ring, given to her by fiancé Roman Polanski.” But the New York Daily News reported Wednesday that parent company Gotta Have It partner Pete Siegel asserts that Tate was wearing it when she was killed. He adds, “Who knows where the bidding will end up? She was so beautiful and innocent, and very popular.” And you thought those thrill seeking true-crime fans of a recent episode of “American Horror Story,” thrilled to hold the same ashtray a killer bashed a victim with, were just make-believe.

On the evening of Aug. 9, 1969, the eight-months pregnant Tate, four other individuals and Tate’s unborn son were killed by the Manson’s family’s Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins. Tate was the last to die. As she begged for her life and that of her child, Atkins told her, “Look, bitch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You’re going to die and I don’t feel anything about it.” Tate was then stabbed 16 times. Once she was dead, Atkins used Tate’s blood to scrawl the word “PIG” on a porch wall. Makes you want to run right out and buy some bling, doesn’t it?

Though Tate’s sister Debra acknowledges Sharon owned the ring, she strongly disputes the ring was on Tate’s finger the night of the murder, or that it was even her engagement ring. (Should you choose to study the images of her wedding or have the stomach for the grisly photos of the murder scene for a glimpse of her hand, they’re inconclusive.) Debra told TMZ Tuesday week that “The ring was not Sharon’s style and she never wore it,” and added, “Because Sharon was pregnant, she couldn’t fit any rings on her finger.”

On Wednesday, the auction house clarified via a spokesman that “it was speculated that the ring was on Sharon Tate’s finger at the time of death but never confirmed so we do not dispute Tate’s sister Debra’s claim.” There is, however, one existing photo of Tate wearing the ring on her pinky, adjacent to her slim wedding band.

Gotta Have It’s Siegel calls the ring simply “a great item of Hollywood collectibles.” But come on. Surely macabre curiosity is why Gotta Have It has played up “Sharon’s tragic murder” in its description of the ring, and encouraged the notion that it played a more central role in Tate’s life than it may in fact have had.

Maybe the ring’s significance doesn’t matter if you’re not the sort of person who cares about owning something a famous woman had on as her pregnant belly was being hacked into. But why would someone shell out 10 grand or more for an item if not for Manson family bragging rights? Gotta Have It knows what it’s really auctioning here, and it’s not just a “Hollywood collectible.” Instead, it’s a little bit of what Susan Atkins said she felt the night she killed Tate. It’s a lot less gruesome and a lot more expensive, but it comes from the same place. Repulsively, it’s the opportunity, as Atkins once put it, “to taste death.”

“The Ghost Writer” is an example of a vanishing type of film direction rooted in the values of classical (pre-TV) Hollywood. Although Polanski didn’t make his first feature until 1962 (“A Knife in the Water“), he has done most of his work in that tradition. The subject matter of his movies is often disturbing — jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil — but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn’t cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage to create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn’t cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is. Polanski’s screenwriting sensibility is just as exact — a point vividly demonstrated on “The Ghost Writer,” which Polanski co-adapted with Robert Harris, from Harris’ novel. The filmmaker doles out words the way he doles out shots: sparingly, never giving the viewers more than is necessary to keep them on the hook and waiting for the next revelation. This is a nearly perfect entertainment, never more so than in its final few minutes. 

Swiss officials say their ruling was purely technical and hinged on the United States’ refusal to supply a confidential transcript of a hearing with the prosecutor in charge of the case. This should come as no surprise to Swiss authorities: A court ruling barred the release of the requested material. As a result, though, the Swiss say they were unable to “exclude with the necessary certainty” that Polanski had already served his sentence. He was ordered to serve a 90-day psychiatric evaluation and was released after only 42 days, thanks to a favorable review. But even more important: he fled sentencing.

Of course, his supporters point to judicial misconduct — by way of inappropriate communication between the judge and the prosecutor — and argue that the charges should be tossed out as a result. As Brian Palmer explained in Slate, however:

Outright dismissal is an exceedingly rare remedy for ex parte communications, especially when the communications came after the plea agreement was reached. It’s far more common for the plea agreement to stand, with a new judge brought in to preside over the sentencing.

That didn’t happen, though, because Polanski fled sentencing. Did I mention that Polanski fled sentencing? Yeah, Polanski fled sentencing.

It’s amazing how much about this case has to be repeated, again and again — as Kate Harding did with her Broadsheet post titled, “Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child.” One rarely thinks of child rape as the sort detail that is easily forgotten — not to mention the initial charges of child molestation, rape by use of drugs and sodomy — but so it was in the wake of the director’s arrest late last year. And, once again, I find myself resorting to a single, though different, refrain.

Some are grasping for an optimistic angle, suggesting that the extradition denial might be a good thing for Polanski’s victim, who has voiced her desire for the whole thing to just disappear. As Jezebel’s Anna North pointed out during the BBC segment this morning, it would have disappeared a long time ago if the state of California hadn’t waited over 30 years to actively pursue and settle the case — or if Polanski hadn’t fled sentencing.