Adapted from the critically acclaimed play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, Roman Polanski’s new film is a taut, beautifully crafted chamber piece which allows its incredible cast (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly) a chance to flex their acting muscles. The results aren’t stagey at all: they’re electrifying.

The film opens with two children fighting in a school playground. Their sophisticated parents decide to meet and work out an amicable solution to the situation. The rest of the film is entirely confined to the Park Slope apartment of Michael and Penelope Longstreet (Foster and Reilly), the shabbier, more self-righteous couple who are immediately at odds with Alan and Nancy Cowan (Waltz and Winslet), the wealthy, overburdened and judgemental professionals. As their meeting devolves from polite conversation to heated debate to all-out war, the four characters formand break alliances; sometimes the women gang up on the men, sometimes it’s one couple against the other. Everyone ends up revealing what they really feel, with hilarious results.

Carnage has a lot to say about how much we keep hidden for fear of being judged by the people around us. The script is clever without being pretentious, the cast at the very top of their game, and despite the laughs, Polanski brings just the right amount of sting to the awkward situation the truth produces.