Salt Lake Tribune Review

The simple line on Roman Polanski is this: A great filmmaker, brought down after he has sex with an underage girl, flees the United States to avoid prison time and lives out his career in exile.
But nothing is ever simple, as Marina Zenovich's documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” demonstrates with surgical precision. This clear-eyed film - which debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO in June - recounts the filmmaker's life and career, with a particular focus on that fateful time in 1977, when he met a certain 13-year-old girl.
As recounted by friends and acquaintances, Polanski in the '60s and early '70s was a quicksilver figure in Hollywood. After surviving the Nazi concentration camps (where his mother was killed), Polanski burst into the movie scene with disturbing thrillers such as “Knife in the Water,” “Repulsion” and “Rosemary's Baby.” His fairytale marriage to the beautiful Sharon Tate came crashing down when she was murdered by members of Charles Manson's cult. He kept working, creating what is perhaps his masterpiece, the noir tale of corruption and secrets, “Chinatown.”
That's the prologue to the incident of Feb. 1, 1977, which began when Polanski was taking photos of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey in the home of actor Jack Nicholson - and led to Polanski having sex with the girl. Polanski ultimately agreed to a plea bargain to a lesser charge, but fled the country the night before his final sentencing hearing.
What Zenovich and her co-writers, editor Joe Bini and co-producer P.G. Morgan, find through documents, archival footage of Polanski and new interviews with lawyers and even the victim herself is a glaring case of justice denied - not by the filmmaker's flight from the country, but by the whims of the publicity-obsessed judge who didn't want to appear weak to a slavering press.
“Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” plays like a tight detective story, as Zenovich peels back the layers of half-truths and speculation to tell of one man's crime compounded by a media frenzy and judicial duplicity. It's the sort of complex story Polanski himself would have excelled at telling, if he weren't busy living it.

Sean P. Means can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@ sltrib.com.

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