Warning: The trailer above contains juicy outbursts of scatological language. It also suggests that the director, Roman Polanski, filming "the story of two sets of parents who decide to have a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a schoolyard brawl," has with the help of Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz and Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly generated expansive black-comic tensions within a claustrophobic space.
Polanski has done superb work in close quarters from the beginning of his career, sometimes in films that haven't reached the audiences they deserved, like "Death and the Maiden" (1994), his brilliant, harrowing tale of a female torture and rape victim who turns the rack on her rapist. But "Carnage," from a script Polanski cowrote with Yasmina Reza (author of the original play, "God of Carnage"), is getting a big international push. It will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 1 and will make its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 30.
