Repulsion (1965)

Directed by Roman Polanski.
Starring Catherine Deneuve and Ian Hendry.

In a Nutshell: A sexually confused woman suffers a breakdown while in solitude.

Repulsion, Roman Polanski’s first English language movie, plays as great warm-up to the much more famed Rosemary’s Baby. Both involve women on the edge of insanity and the apartments that serve as their asylums. With Replusion, we enter the mind of Carole Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve), a painfully introverted hairstylist who, despite her beauty is uncomfortable about her sexuality. She flees from even the most honest of suitors and is disgusted with her sister’s relationship with a married man. When the couple goes away on vacation, Carole is left alone to her thoughts, leading to a psychological breakdown with nightmarish hallucinations that jostle between perverse pleasure and madness. As reality begins to slip away, Carole begins to lash out violently at the world around her.

Deneuve, who was in her early 20’s during shooting, gives an incredibly mature performance though much of the effectiveness lies in cheating the audience out of Deneuve’s objectification. Instead through a lack of character study, the audience never sees the motives behind Carole’s madness, only an onslaught of the surreal. Polanski’s later work is distinguished by far too much excess, but Repulsion chills with the smallest details. The constant dripping of water of the buzzing of a fly. The sight of a dead rabbit in Carole’s purse. Or most effectively, Carole listening to her sister and boyfriend noisily making love, which outlines Carole’s sexual terror without having to be gratuitous. The film’s shortcomings lie in any explanation towards Carole’s sexual confusion (save maybe the last shot). Polanski is far too concerned with filling Carole’s mind with decay than bog itself down with exposition. If Deneuve’s performance never begged empathy, perhaps it is because the movie would not have allowed it anyway. But with the viewer looking for any meaning behind it all will only discover the continuing fascination of Carole’s fear and desire becoming one.