THERE was a gap on the red carpet Friday night at the Berlin film festival. It was believed to be the first time in cinematic history that a director was unable to attend his own film premiere because he was electronically tethered, in this case to his Swiss chalet where the filmmaker is under house arrest awaiting possible extradition to the US on rape charges.

Critics were swift to point out the parallels between Roman Polanski's own story and those of his film The Ghost Writer, an adaptation of British writer Robert Harris's bestselling thriller Ghost.

A thinly disguised critique of the Blair government's forays into Iraq and its overly cosy relationship with the US, the film tells the story of a former British prime minister with a close resemblance to Tony Blair (albeit a flattering one, as the PM is played by Pierce Brosnan), who hires a hack to write his memoirs. The writer (Ewan McGregor) finds out some nasty truths about his client, and seeks to flee as the prime minister is put under investigation for war crimes for involving his country in CIA renditions of terror suspects.

The prime minister becomes a fugitive in a high-security compound in Martha's Vineyard, trapped, like Polanski, in a holiday home, cut off from the outside world and waiting to hear of his fate at the hands of the judicial authorities.

“I think it must have been the similarities between life and fiction that subconsciously drew him to the story in the first place,” said Harris.

The writer, who worked on the screenplay with Polanski, and visited him in his chalet last month so that they could watch the finished film together, said that no one, including Polanski had been able “to overlook the ironies”. Among them are the fact that the action takes place in the very two countries, Britain and the US, where Polanski has not been allowed to travel since he was charged with having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

The dark thriller prompted sniggers from the Berlin audience as its mischievous script produced lines such as “you're like America's whipping boy, crying home to Daddy”, delivered by the prime minister's wife, who resembles Cherie Blair, or the nonagenarian resident of Martha's Vineyard who asks “Now why did he go and get himself mixed up with that ... fool in the White House?”

To which McGregor's character replies “Well, that's what everyone wants to know”.

— The Guardian, London