The film stars Oliver Masucci, Fanny Ardant, John Cleese, Bronwyn James, Joaquim de Almeida, Luca Barbareschi, Milan Peschel, Fortunato Cerlino, and Mickey Rourke.

It chronicles the mishaps of a 1999 New Year's Eve dinner party in the Gstaad Palace, from a penguin going loose in the hotel to the exploitation of the millennium bug for a guest's financial gain.

Among them is Bongo, a former Italian porn star whose career has long stalled; Dr. Lima, a famous plastic surgeon whose questionable works are visible on the faces of some guests, together with his wife suffering from Alzheimer's disease; the Marquise de la Valle, an elderly noblewoman who loves her dog more than humans; Arthur William Dallas III, a rich tycoon in his nineties who will celebrate his first wedding anniversary with the naive Magnolia, seventy years his junior; finally the shady Bill Crush, who boasts of wealth but seems bad at business.

Meanwhile, Tell, invited to the party by Crush, has second thoughts that call their plan into question: when the banker inadvertently takes marijuana offered to him by the Russian girls following Anton, he lets go of his inhibitions and starts spending the money which he still doesn't have in very expensive champagne.

[10][11] In April 2022, Mickey Rourke, Joaquim de Almeida, John Cleese, Oliver Masucci, Fanny Ardant, Fortunato Cerlino, and Alexander Petrov were cast in the film, while Alexandre Desplat and Paweł Edelman served as composer and cinematographer, respectively.

[3] Ewa Piaskowska served as an additional screenwriter, while Viktor Dobronravov, Olga Kent, Naike Anna Silipo, Matthew T. Reynolds, Teco Celio, Marina Strakhova, and Danylo Kotov were added to the cast.

Producer Luca Barbareschi stated that this was similar to Polanski's previous film, An Officer and a Spy, which was never released in the US, the UK, Australia or New Zealand.

[35] Jo-Ann Titmarsh of the London Evening Standard awarded The Palace one star out of five, noting the controversy surrounding Polanski, while calling the film "so dire that the filmmaker can no longer be defended because of his genius.

"[36] Kevin Maher, writing for The Times, said the film was "an eye-scorching atrocity that is instantly one of the most egregious film-making failures of the year, possibly even the decade," rated it no stars out of five, and ultimately called it "conspicuously bad".

[37] Robbie Collin from The Telegraph criticised the humour and gave the film one star out of five, commenting that it is "at least 23 years past its sell-by date, though less in the sense of 'you can't tell these jokes any more' than 'why would you want to?'."

Festival head Alberto Barbera defended their inclusion, saying of Polanski specifically, "I don't understand why one cannot distinguish between the responsibilities of the man and those of the artist.