The true-Hollywood tale told in Marina Zenovich’s compelling documentary could almost be comic if the events it recounts weren’t prompted by a sexual dalliance between a 44-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl. Thankfully, Zenovich isn’t out to exonerate Roman Polanski for the misdeed for which he was convicted in Los Angeles in 1977, and which prompted his hasty departure to Europe. But by revealing the startling and bizarre circumstances around the case, her film still elicits some sympathy for the man who one interviewee refers to as a “malignant Polish dwarf.”

Perhaps most shocking is the fact that the mess wasn’t the fault of the lawyers — instead, the straight-arrow prosecutor and Polanski’s defence attorney reveal how the high-profile case was badly bungled by the presiding judge, a gloryhound with more than a few things in common with the defendant.

Using archival footage and frank interviews with nearly everyone but Polanski (including his victim), Zenovich fashions a balanced account of the scandal. Her attempts to create a larger portrait of the filmmaker’s volatile life are less satisfying, though her juxtaposition of scenes from his work with moments in the real-life drama yields some deliciously arch moments, none more so than when the voice-over in a trailer for The Tenant ominously declares that “no one does it to you like Roman Polanski.”