It’s New Year’s Eve and the staff of The Palace, a Swiss five-star hotel, are preparing to welcome the wizened old rich and the heavily armed nouveau riche for the final bacchanal of the 20th century — the night that, according to conspiracy theories of the time, the digitised international financial order would evaporate, taking with it the world as humans knew it. As the great and the good gather at The Palace, Polanski’s unflattering depiction of the rich in their festive habitat, and the ensemble cast he assembles to portray them, resembles comedies like Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter and Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. An octogenarian Texas billionaire and his 20-something wife arrive to celebrate their first anniversary with the husband’s love song, set to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday,’ sung by press-ganged hotel staff, and a penguin. Several ladies of a certain age, their faces deformed by plastic surgery, course through the hotel lobby and, sure enough, the cosmetic surgeon who cut them also turns up. A loud party of Russian mobsters, with an entourage of female escorts and bodyguards, rolls up in a stretch limo and a hummer full of luggage — including several suitcases stuffed with US dollars. Mr Crush, an American financier with a blond wig, orange skin, and a New York accent swaggers into the lobby and demands a suite, though there is no evidence he made a reservation. Crush doesn’t party with the Russians, but their stay at The Palace overlaps with a televised press conference announcing the resignation of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and the appointment of a fellow named Putin to replace him at the Kremlin. At about that point it seems Polanski may be suggesting that, though the world did not end on 1 Jan., 2000, it was around then that the ball got rolling.Jim Quilty