Polanski Unauthorized

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2009-02-13 NY
• Running Time: 95 min.
• Director: Damian Chapa
• Cast: Damian Chapa, Silvia Suvadova, Elena Talan, Brienne De Beau, Monica Ramon, Derek Johnson, Dana Fares, Charles Arthur Berg, Robert McAtee, Tom Druilhet
• Producer:
• Writer: Damian Chapa, Carlton Holder
• Distributor: Walking Shadows
• Official Site: Polanski Unauthorized Official Site

A fictionalized chronicle of the life, art and disgraceful European exile of the Chinatown director, written, produced, directed by and starring B-movie actor-director Damian Chapa (El Padrino: The Mexican Godfather). Though it’s a near thing, the movie isn’t quite bad enough to qualify as a classic tone-deaf vanity production; it isn’t The Room. Chapa plays the director passably well, and even manages a decent Polish accent when the auteur is berating underlings or popping pills and pawing at actresses, but he resorts to scrunching up his face and yelling when there are big emotions to express. Chapa appears to view the diminutive pedophile as an innocent abroad (“This isn’t Europe, Mr. Polanski,” growls a bullet-headed cop), though there’s a whiff of an implication that his involvement with a Satanist technical adviser on Rosemary’s Baby may have had a maligned influence on his destiny. Still, Chapa earns our gratitude by staging very discreetly the Manson family slaughter of Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate (lookalike Brienne De Beau). Another mercy: Leah Grimsson, the actress cast as the tween blonde Polanski drugged and raped, is a young woman who caught a final glimpse of 13 in her rearview mirror several summers ago.