Released in 1965, REPULSION was Polish-born Roman Polanski's second major film and his first English-language film. At the time of its release it was incredibly controversial for inclusion of the sound of a woman having an orgasm, frankly sexual themes, and what was then considered graphic violence; seen today, the film no longer has the same "shock" factor, but it nonetheless remains one of the single most unsettling films of its era.
The film is essentially a single-character study of a beautiful but oddly disengaged young woman, Carole, who works as a salon beautician while living in London with her sister. As the film begins, Carole is upset that her sister is having an affair with a married man and indeed plans to vacation with him in Italy; as it progresses, we quickly come to see her as distinctly resentful of her sister's lover, indifferent to her own would-be boyfriend, and increasingly suspicious of men in general. When her sister does indeed go on vacation, Carole is left alone in their apartment--and soon drifts into a maelstrom of sexually psychotic dreams and hallucinations that suddenly turn violent.
Polanski is a master of mood, and his portrait of the apartment is both noir-ish and disquieting--and becomes more so when he allows the camera to see the apartment from Carole's increasingly disturbed point of view: the entire apartment becomes a harrowing maze of light and dark, the walls exploding with cracks and then suddenly moist in a womb-like manner, the plaster exploding with grabbing hands, the decorative ceiling lowering like an odd nipple over Carole's bed. Even as he presents us with Carole's internal world, however, Polanski also presents us with the tangible results of her disordered thinking: the food in the apartment rots, the bath tub overflows, the rooms become chaotic.
Catherine Deneuve was a rising star at the time she played Carole, and the film put her well over the top. Her performance is extraordinary: a strange sort of blankness onto which Polanski projects Carole's rapid decay. The cinematography and art direction is also quite remarkable, and although there have been several rationalizations of why Carole so suddenly declines into madness Polanski leaves the questions open: in the end there is no concrete explanation and no actual resolution.
All of this is fascinating stuff, but this is not to say that the film is flawless. At times Polanski's art-house nature seems to overpower the film, and he has a marked tendency to allow the action to go still for long periods of time--presumably to make the jolts feel more extreme, but this is a ploy which does not always have the impact one expects. And while the open-ended nature of the film is one of its great powers, it is not executed in an entirely satisfactory sort of way. Even so, REPULSION is a landmark in its own way, and strongly recommended. Sadly, the DVD quality is merely so-so and there are no bonuses of any kind.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
The film is essentially a single-character study of a beautiful but oddly disengaged young woman, Carole, who works as a salon beautician while living in London with her sister. As the film begins, Carole is upset that her sister is having an affair with a married man and indeed plans to vacation with him in Italy; as it progresses, we quickly come to see her as distinctly resentful of her sister's lover, indifferent to her own would-be boyfriend, and increasingly suspicious of men in general. When her sister does indeed go on vacation, Carole is left alone in their apartment--and soon drifts into a maelstrom of sexually psychotic dreams and hallucinations that suddenly turn violent.
Polanski is a master of mood, and his portrait of the apartment is both noir-ish and disquieting--and becomes more so when he allows the camera to see the apartment from Carole's increasingly disturbed point of view: the entire apartment becomes a harrowing maze of light and dark, the walls exploding with cracks and then suddenly moist in a womb-like manner, the plaster exploding with grabbing hands, the decorative ceiling lowering like an odd nipple over Carole's bed. Even as he presents us with Carole's internal world, however, Polanski also presents us with the tangible results of her disordered thinking: the food in the apartment rots, the bath tub overflows, the rooms become chaotic.
Catherine Deneuve was a rising star at the time she played Carole, and the film put her well over the top. Her performance is extraordinary: a strange sort of blankness onto which Polanski projects Carole's rapid decay. The cinematography and art direction is also quite remarkable, and although there have been several rationalizations of why Carole so suddenly declines into madness Polanski leaves the questions open: in the end there is no concrete explanation and no actual resolution.
All of this is fascinating stuff, but this is not to say that the film is flawless. At times Polanski's art-house nature seems to overpower the film, and he has a marked tendency to allow the action to go still for long periods of time--presumably to make the jolts feel more extreme, but this is a ploy which does not always have the impact one expects. And while the open-ended nature of the film is one of its great powers, it is not executed in an entirely satisfactory sort of way. Even so, REPULSION is a landmark in its own way, and strongly recommended. Sadly, the DVD quality is merely so-so and there are no bonuses of any kind.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer