Cinema’s convivial survivor

Patricia Danaher found Roman Polanski, the controversial director of Carnage, in ebullient form when she met him in Paris

THERE is something very much larger than life about the diminutive Roman Polanski, when he comes bounding in to the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris for an interview. Seventy-eight now, he looks more like a man in his 50s and is very relaxed and jocular, eager to talk about nearly everything, it seems.

Sony Classic Pictures, the distributors of his new movie Carnage, are feeling much more cautious and make it a condition of the interview that I sign an undertaking not to ask him anything about his ‘troubles’, most of them related to his rape of a 13-year-old in 1977. It turns out to be completely superfluous. Polanski wants to talk, and like a man who is trying to take stock and put things in order, everything is on the table.