A close-up of an eye frames the beginning and the ending of Roman Polanski's psychological horror classic REPULSION. The owner of this eye is Carole Ledoux, one of cinema's most unsettling heroines, who is about to -- in the next 100 minutes -- undergo a complete personality transformation from a soft-spoken ingenue to a catatonic madwoman who actually anticipates her own imagined rape.
The choice to use Catherine Deneuve must have been a stroke of casting brilliance (even though the expression is dated and cliché) because her pale features, blond hair, and overall simpering body language make her an ideal for a young woman about to snap at any moment. Her Carole Ledoux is a obsessive compulsive woman who can't stand to see dust over a chair, much less the kiss of another man.
She receives no help from her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). A woman as outgoing as she is withdrawn, there is an implied notion that Helen would rather be living alone than with her sister Carole. It makes me wonder how much of Carole's eventual madness would her character be aware of, but then again, she is into her own life, so that would be unlikely.
The only person who seems to want to help Carole, who senses there is something wrong with her and is resolved to be with her despite anything is Colin (John Fraser), but she is too immersed in her own crumbling mind to notice. It's not a help that it ends badly and he winds up in her bathtub which she's already filled with water -- why, we never know. Once he's gone, her mind is free to devolve into its chaos, and this chaos is able to finally conquer her until she is in a catatonic haze.
Why do people go mad? There is no true explanation for it. There are people who doubt Carole's unraveling mind would have taken place in the way it does, but this is exactly what happens, not just in this movie, but in usual circumstances.
Polanski is excellent in establishing her progressive mental decay: she listens to a couple make love through the walls of her apartment -- itself enhancing her own repressed sexuality, a very striking moment of eroticism. She begins acting oddly not only at home, but at work, even while walking down the street. Polanski uses some experimental jazz to manifest her mind spinning out of control much in the way he used it in some of the more nerve wracking sequences of ROSEMARY'S BABY. About forty-five minutes into the movie -- roughly halfway -- we're treated to a blink or miss image of a man standing opposite from Carole, reflected in her closet mirror. It's a powerful moment and one that didn't need the shocks used today to make me jump out of my seat. Using odd camera angles, photographing people in extreme upside down closeups, and showing increasingly imagined scenes of rape, Polanski creates a hellish scenario where a woman's mind is torn to pieces, and where we can't do anything to stop it but watch. It does add to Deneuve's powerhouse performance that much of her time on screen is spent nearly mute and by herself. Terror, because of this, becomes an internalized experienced that only becomes external through the set the apartment was modeled on and Deneuve's extreme acting, which is a revelation. The mundane, even the trivial, does a 180 degree turn and becomes chaotic, a reflection of reality gone to hell, and a beautiful woman turned inside-out due to her repressed feelings directed towards her father, who at that last haunting shot of the family portrait looks a little like the rapist -- disclosing the root of her intability and her hatred/desire of men.
REPULSION is a groundbreaking horror film that has become more relevant in recent times with the advance of psychology. Eschewing ghosts for shadows and surreal settings, its influence can be seen in the more harrowing moments of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM where Sarah Goldfarb is stalked by her own crumbling mind in her own apartment and a refrigerator suddenly turns homicidal.
The choice to use Catherine Deneuve must have been a stroke of casting brilliance (even though the expression is dated and cliché) because her pale features, blond hair, and overall simpering body language make her an ideal for a young woman about to snap at any moment. Her Carole Ledoux is a obsessive compulsive woman who can't stand to see dust over a chair, much less the kiss of another man.
She receives no help from her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). A woman as outgoing as she is withdrawn, there is an implied notion that Helen would rather be living alone than with her sister Carole. It makes me wonder how much of Carole's eventual madness would her character be aware of, but then again, she is into her own life, so that would be unlikely.
The only person who seems to want to help Carole, who senses there is something wrong with her and is resolved to be with her despite anything is Colin (John Fraser), but she is too immersed in her own crumbling mind to notice. It's not a help that it ends badly and he winds up in her bathtub which she's already filled with water -- why, we never know. Once he's gone, her mind is free to devolve into its chaos, and this chaos is able to finally conquer her until she is in a catatonic haze.
Why do people go mad? There is no true explanation for it. There are people who doubt Carole's unraveling mind would have taken place in the way it does, but this is exactly what happens, not just in this movie, but in usual circumstances.
Polanski is excellent in establishing her progressive mental decay: she listens to a couple make love through the walls of her apartment -- itself enhancing her own repressed sexuality, a very striking moment of eroticism. She begins acting oddly not only at home, but at work, even while walking down the street. Polanski uses some experimental jazz to manifest her mind spinning out of control much in the way he used it in some of the more nerve wracking sequences of ROSEMARY'S BABY. About forty-five minutes into the movie -- roughly halfway -- we're treated to a blink or miss image of a man standing opposite from Carole, reflected in her closet mirror. It's a powerful moment and one that didn't need the shocks used today to make me jump out of my seat. Using odd camera angles, photographing people in extreme upside down closeups, and showing increasingly imagined scenes of rape, Polanski creates a hellish scenario where a woman's mind is torn to pieces, and where we can't do anything to stop it but watch. It does add to Deneuve's powerhouse performance that much of her time on screen is spent nearly mute and by herself. Terror, because of this, becomes an internalized experienced that only becomes external through the set the apartment was modeled on and Deneuve's extreme acting, which is a revelation. The mundane, even the trivial, does a 180 degree turn and becomes chaotic, a reflection of reality gone to hell, and a beautiful woman turned inside-out due to her repressed feelings directed towards her father, who at that last haunting shot of the family portrait looks a little like the rapist -- disclosing the root of her intability and her hatred/desire of men.
REPULSION is a groundbreaking horror film that has become more relevant in recent times with the advance of psychology. Eschewing ghosts for shadows and surreal settings, its influence can be seen in the more harrowing moments of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM where Sarah Goldfarb is stalked by her own crumbling mind in her own apartment and a refrigerator suddenly turns homicidal.