CARNAGE

Roman Polanski knows all about carnage. A survivor of the concentration camps, his wife and unborn child murdered, while his movies include such un-family fare as "Repulsion", "Rosemary's Baby" and a very bloody "Macbeth", so it may seem appropriate that his new film should actually be called "Carnage". No-one dies in this film, (which is based on Yasmina Reza's play "The God of Carnage"), but civilised behaviour sure as hell takes a beating as two cultured couples (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) squabble over which of their children was to blame for a playground brawl. All four players are superb, (Winslet and Waltz particularly so) and the 79 minute running equates to the time scale of the events on view. It may not be carnage, then, of the kind we normally associate with Polanski but it's down-there and dirty and very, very funny.