The Tenant (1976)
4/10
The Tenant : A "Comedy" film in which Sven Nykvist's magic has been wasted by Roman Polanski.
2 June 2013
On its movie poster, Roman Polanski's film "The Tenant"/Le Locataire as it is known in France, has been described as a psychological suspense thriller. However, this description hides the real story behind this film as it appears more of a comedy film with sufficient doses of lukewarm suspense and indolent thriller. The Tenant has a running time of 125 minutes but for more than 60 minutes there is hardly any portrayal of suspense nor thriller as this time has been utilized by Roman Polanski for what he might like to call "Character Development". He inundates viewers with trivial scenes of daily lives where the protagonist discusses his apartment with his co-workers. It is this aspect of character development which becomes a colossal obstacle for this film as admirers of suspense and thriller genre are shocked to learn that not much has been done in the film by Roman Polanski especially in the manner in which a director enlightens viewers about how certain events have resulted in the development of suspense and thriller shown in the film. This is the major reason why this film reveals itself as a very bad farce in the end where viewers are left to bear the hallucinations of one of world cinema's notorious directors who also acts as the film's protagonist.
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