‘We must get this crack mended...’
A haunted house tale is one thing. Don’t get me wrong, they can be effective. But a haunted mind? That’s something else entirely. Roman Polanski explores this concept to great effect with Repulsion, his first English language film, and the first in a loose trilogy based around city apartment dwelling and alienation (the others being Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant).
Carol (Catherine Deneuve) and Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) a pair of Belgian immigrants, share a small flat in London with occasional visits from Helen’s leering boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry). When the latter pair go away for a fortnight, Carol’s sexual repression and declining mental health begins to have disastrous consequences…
Artfully shot in striking black and white, Polanski shoves his camera right in the face of both Carol, and the men that orbit her small world, exposing the flaws and weaknesses of all involved. As Carol is an unreliable narrator, we’re never sure if the men that she encounters really are this lecherous and sinful, or whether that is just her warped perception of them. Either way, their advances cause her to gradually retreat into herself and into her increasingly squalid flat.
Deneuve gives a masterful performance in the lead role, all twitches and tics, a bundle of nervous energy. Polanski uses provocative imagery to project Carol’s state of mind, and it is in these moments in which he reveals the kind of filmmaker he would become – bold, experimental and enigmatic.
Repulsion is a difficult film to sit through, a young woman’s deterioration is never pretty, but it is also an essential glimpse into the perception of women, and the toll that takes on their psyche. Something rendered sadly ironic by Polanski’s own complicated relationship with the opposite sex.