Repulsion

"Repulsion" is a great example of how to make a truly scary movie: The trick is not to fill the screen with monsters or indestructible serial killers, it is to portray fear in a way that will be familiar to the audience. It is clear from early on in the film that the lead character, Carol, played brilliantly by an extremely young-looking Catherine Deneuve, is not exactly normal. When her sister leaves her alone in their shared London apartment for a few days, however, the things that scare Carol are the sorts of things that have scared a lot of people spending the night alone, such as hearing (imagined) footsteps in the hallway and the like. Of course, while normal people get a brief fright from such a thing, Carol descends into a madness of hallucinations. The movie is seen almost entirely from her point of view, using techniques borrowed by later directors such as Darren Aronofsky for his movie, "Pi", which gives the entire movie a claustrophobic feeling that enhances the impact of Carol's hallucinations.

There are no doubt people who would like to explicate this film as an exploration of sexual repression or the like, and perhaps they are indeed hitting the mark in doing so, but this film works brilliantly as pure cinema, with no metaphoric subtext needed.

Overall Rating: 4 stars (out of 4), or 9 (out of 10)

This film, the first Polanski made in English, works so well, and for so many different reasons, that I felt like I had to watch it again as soon as it ended.

From the first moments of the movie, Polanski sets up the key conflict, cutting between shots of Catherine Denuve's gorgeous face and of the things she is seeing, all of which are almost frighteningly ugly by comparison. After fifteen minutes of this, it becomes clear why Denuve's Carol is unable to cope with anything in the world around her, and why she is so dependent on her sister and her attractive female co-worker, who provide the film's only beauty other than Denuve. When her sister leaves her alone, her surroundings decay further into ugliness, sending her deeper into her madness. I loved the way that despite Carol's growing insanity, Polanski keeps going back to closeups of her face, which remains beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that no one can seem to notice that she is clearly very deranged.

The only question the film left me with is this: How could Carol possibly survived for an entire lifetime up till the point where the film began?

In "Repulsion" the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve suffers from an industrial-strength case of sexual repression, coupled with a hefty dose of sibling rivalry which foists upon her a succession of rape fantasies and delusional hallucinations. Polanski's direction is unparalleled as he elicits a creepy terror through the use of some fairly unconventional special-effects. The subjective world created for the heroine is a series of dreams and visions of a decaying apartment and psycho-sexual fantasy and this is what the film seems to be about. The cracking walls are perhaps one of the most ingeniously horrifying special-effects in cinematic history. The lack of dialogue that runs throughout complements the restrained narrative design as the neurotic obsessions remain largely unexplained. But for better or for worse, I think better, Polanski's final frame settles on an image which cryptically resolves the entire enigma with a kind of devastating efficiency. All in all, one of the great films of the 1960s.

Extremely shocking if you consider the time it was filmed!

Carole, a beautiful, young, unusually shy, fragile, foreigner, works in a beauty salon and lives with her older sister Helene in London. Her behavior at first seems "faintly strange" and distant, but it appears like this is normal for everyone around her. Soon we realize she is antisocial and has a psycho-pathological fear of males and sex. When Helene leaves for a trip with her lover, Carole isolates herself in her sister's apartment and surrenders to her morbid fantasies that lead her down a path of hallucinations all the way to murder.

Polanski uses "the world outside" in a clever way, to give us the whole parameter that helps bring about Carole's downfall. The social alienation a foreigner feels, the domination games and the self-interest of the people close to her. The men that approach her together with her own sexual fears, are all catalysts. They create the image of a threatening world and her helpless existence in it, as seen from inside her already troubled mind. Then begins a very true, detailed description of her problematic mind that slowly worsens into madness. Done in a natural and simple way and perhaps that is what makes it so haunting.

The first part is purposely slow. A moment-to-moment reality that builds up tension and soon gives way to a nightmarish world. We watch as everyday reality transforms into a closed-door hell and as Carole transforms from "strange" into a clinical psychopath. The house becomes a character, its dimensions distorted and Carole is left there, to wander in it alone, with the house and the objects acting as symbols to portray exactly what is going on inside her head. (Everything symbolizes Carole's mental decline in parallel). Space becomes distorted. Time becomes distorted. She becomes distorted.

The black and white makes you focus exactly where the director wanted and the visual effects are very limited compared to todays psychological thrillers. Here, the girl and the apartment are enough. The violence is not graphic it is psychological. Polanski's expert use of sound, sets, camera angles and framing all play a great role in creating the horror atmosphere.

Deneuve is Fantastic! In a very difficult part (if you consider she plays alone and without dialogue most of the time) delivering an extremely complex role (her best performance to date) perfectly!! People have rushed to say she was "flat" but in this specific film, I believe that was the intention. The MIND is the protagonist here; she is only the vehicle where the mind lives. Her "underplaying" helps the viewer focus on what is happening inside her head, makes you follow her and go through the experience with her. If one decides to watch this film and not experience it, then yes, she looks hypnotized.

By the time Helene and her boyfriend return, the viewer is just as shocked to have seen what the couple finds there. It is heartbreaking. The very last scene then finishes you off, perhaps giving the biggest clue. Revealing a secret as to why this has happened. And the way this scene is filmed leaves you with a chill in the spine. I became even more disturbed well after the movie was over and my thoughts had settled down. This is why I call this film an "experience".

I think that some factors always needed when putting a "value" on films are often overlooked. Things like: Time of release, Level of difficulty in achievement of the story itself and Level of difficulty because of the budget or the country of production. Based on these, I think that Polanski has created masterwork. It could be considered very slow, especially for today's viewers. And for others it could even be considered a claustrophobic hell. In respecting everyone's personal opinions I would only recommend this to a specific audience and specific friends. Mostly ones who want to concentrate and allow themselves to be taken in by this type of film. For them, I am sure the experience will be rewarding.

This young woman's descent into insanity is so well documented that you truly thank God that it is not you that is going through this. Leave it to Roman Polanski to scare the hell out of you! I was grieving the death of someone who was very close to me when I saw this movie, and this movie snapped me out of that grief; the awareness that it could always be worse helped. Highly recommended.