He may be a filmmaker of international repute, but these days Roman Polanski is better remembered for his involvement in the sexual abuse case involving a 13-year-old girl. The French-Polish film director, whose last cinematic outing was 2010’s The Ghost Writer, returns with Carnage, a black comedy based on Yasmina Reza’s acclaimed play God of Carnage.

Starring a spectacular ensemble cast — Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, and John C Reilly, Carnage premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and will be released worldwide by Sony Pictures Classics. The film, Polanski’s first foray into the world of black comedy, is an international co-production involving France, Germany and Poland. Although set in Brooklyn, New York, it had to be shot in Paris as Polanski could not travel legally to the United St­ates due to the sexual abuse case.

So what’s Carnage all about? The film follows two sets of parents who meet to make peace after a brawl involving their children. Jodie Foster and John C Reilly play Penelope and Michael Longst­reet, bohemians from Brooklyn. After their 11-ye­ar-old son is beaten up, Nancy (Winslet) and Alan (Waltz) Cowan, the parents of the “bully”, come calling in an effort to defuse the tension. That, however, is not to be. Battle lines are drawn across the charming living room and the gloves are off. And instead of resolving the children’s fight, the quartet bickers and brawls, and forgets their so-called civilised ways to squabble like sulky five-year-olds. Along the way, marital woes, personal troubles and private tragedies come to the fore.

This isn’t the first time that Polanksi is doing a “chamber” piece — he made a mark earlier with Knife in the Water, Repulsion and The Tenant (the third in his “Apartment” trilogy). In Carnage, he rarely puts a foot wrong as he shoots around the four protagonists. There’s a fifth character too – the apartment that witnesses the war of words as an evening that began as an exercise in civility devolves into a storm of anger and contempt. Referring to this aspect of Polanski’s direction, New York Film Festival director Richard Pena has called him “a poet of small spaces ... in just a couple of rooms he can conjure up an entire world, an entire society.”

In the apartment in Carnage, the air is replete with loathing, bitterness and tension — and it all goes up in incremental degrees. An uptight Nancy, unable to deal with the edgy atmosphere, proce­eds to throw up all over passive-aggressive Pe­nelope’s Oskar Kokoschka coffee table book, setting the stage for verbal warfare. The strong cast nails the characters to the T — be it Winslet as the high-flying city worker, Waltz as the corporate honcho who can’t do without his cellphone (he incidentally has the film’s best lines) or Reilly as the amazingly insensitive Michael. Foster, in particular, excels as the micro-managing Penelope who’s bursting with do-good impulses. It’s a treat to watch the actors spar with each other, as the hostility and strain rises notch by notch. Ha­mpered by a weak script, Carnage is redeemed by good performances. Will the actors be lining up for awards soon? More likely than not!