The Palace

The maître d' of a Swiss hotel must please everyone before the New Year's party: Arab wives, Russian gangsters, an American millionaire, and a retired celebrity. Each has their own preferences, fears, whims, and list of demands.

Polanski, who has had a penchant for dark humor throughout his career, transforms this "last ball of the millennium" into a brilliant parody at the intersection of "Triangle of Sadness" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel," dissecting each character with precision. Yet even within these caricatured portrayals, John Cleese, Alexander Petrov, Mickey Rourke, and Fanny Ardant remain humanly vulnerable and touching in their nuances. "The Palace" serves as an excellent reminder that life, much like history, is cyclical and vulgar, and the crooked demons of the past have merely learned to dress better.