Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski speaks five languages -- Polish, French, English, Spanish, and Russian -- and this is the first film he directed in English. In an interview included on the Criterion DVD, he said that for him, characters matter more than the story, because you will remember the characters long after you forget what the story and the plot elements were. And at least in the case of this movie, that's probably absolutely true. We are definitely going to remember Catherine Deneuve's performance, even if we never definitely learn why the character, Carol, is as she is. 

The film opens with the close-up on a human eye -- Carol's (Catherine Deneuve) eye. The names of the movie's cast and crew come and go, but the eye continues to take up the background of the screen.

Who is Carol? She's a young blonde French hairdresser living in London. She lives with her older sister, who is having an affair with a married man. Carol doesn't seem to like him much. He puts his toothbrush in her bathroom glass. And maybe she doesn't like that he's married, although her sister says that this is "my own affair." (No pun intended?)

It's difficult to know exactly what Carol's mental condition is. Is she just depressed? She goes to work, but otherwise, she stares off and hardly speaks, forgets about a dinner date with a boyfriend(?). And at one point, she seems to start seeing things that aren't there. If she's started seeing things, is she paranoid, too? 

By the way, I really appreciate the camera work and the use of shadow and light in this film, as well the deep focus used in some of the shots. Great attention to detail, great camera work and cinematography. To anyone giving this movie a one-star review: Do you not appreciate the elements of great film making? You might not appreciate the story or the pacing, but can't you appreciate the focus and detail, and the overall effort that was put into make this film? Giving this film a one-star review is such an insult, considering how poorly made real one-star films are.  

Anyway, Carol starts to notice cracks -- for viewers, a metaphor that hits us over the head. First, it's real cracks in the sidewalk. Then later, she will be walking down the hallway in her apartment, startled by a big crack that fractures the wall right next to her. Did the wall really crack like that? Unlikely. It's simply a way for us to visualize what's happening in her mind. She's, moving closer and closer to madness. 

Carol's sister leaves to go on holiday with her boyfriend, and we see time pass as the potatoes left on the kitchen counter start to sprout. Carol misses days at work without noticing and then discovers when she touches the wall in her apartment that it leaves impressions of her hands. Her boyfriend and boss at work are concerned, but they don't know what to do for her. A friend at work tells her to go see a Chaplin film to cheer up, and they both start laughing as the friend recounts the hilarity of the film. That all abruptly stops when the friend opens her purse and finds a rabbit's heart that Carol has apparently put there.  

Meanwhile, Carol has the strange compulsion to scratch at her nose, as if she has an itch she can't scratch. She also bites her nails. From time to time, the film will add the sound of drumming, probably to indicate the pounding rhythm going on in Carol's head.

Finally, the unexpected happens. Carol uses the candelabra to bash in the brains of her boyfriend. He has come over to check on her, but she remains silent and uncommunicative. As he turns to leave, she kills him. The scene shifts to a close-up of his right ear as blood drips down through his hair. He never tried to harm her. So, what "threat" in her mind caused her to kill him?

What caused her mental state? Maybe nothing, but she has multiple fantasies of an ugly man holding her down and raping her on her bed. When this happens, everything else goes silent and we hear the ticking of a clock until, finally, an alarm or bell rings. Then she wakes up on the floor. This happens a couple of times. Who was this man? Did he ever exist? Is sexual abuse the reason for how she is now? Was she abused as a child? 

After killing her boyfriend, she nails a board across the door to the apartment and drags the dead body of her boyfriend to the bathtub. The rabbit that her sister had been preparing days ago sits in the kitchen covered with flies. 

The rooms of the apartment start to elongate, distort. The body of her boyfriend seems to have moved from the bathtub to the living room couch. Hands reach and grope at her through the walls.

Eventually, the Landlord comes over for the rent. His attitude changes, however, once he receives it. He notices the disarray of the apartment, but he also notices how young and beautiful Carol is. He starts to make aggressive moves on Carol, and she defends herself with a straight razor -- first to the back of his neck, but then to every inch of his body. In a way, it's a much different killing than the killing of her boyfriend. It's much more brutal, but also much more "understandable."

The walls continue to crack, and we see her lying eyes wide open on her bed once more. The ticking starts again.  This time the camera is "on top" of her and the ringing starts as the abusive man appears in her bed. 

As I watch the film and write all this down, I'm trying to figure out what it all means. If some initial trauma started all this. She walks down the hallway with hands grabbing at her. The ceiling starts to close in on her. We hear cymbals clashing together as the camera closes in on her right eye. 

And now her sister and her boyfriend are back from Pisa, Italy. The apartment is in complete disarray. The Landlord's body remains behind the overturned couch. Her sister screams when she sees the body of Carol's boyfriend in the bathtub. 

Carol's body is under the bed, and various people from the apartment complex gather and stare. No one knows what to do. She's still alive, and Carol's sister's married lover carries her away in his arms as we hear the ticking of the clock and the sound of water segway into the sound of a flute. 

The family picture of Carol and her family seem to indicate that Carol was always off. The movie ends with the camera returning to this portrait, zooming in on Carol and into her right eye -- bringing the movie full circle to the way it began. 

But what does it all mean? Polaski himself said, "Don't ever ask me to explain any of my pictures." He wants the ambiguity, and to "explain it" wouldn't serve his purpose. He wants us to wonder what happened, why she's that way, and what the ending means. 

This was a low-budget film made by the British Compton Productions -- maybe best known for softcore porn -- for 65,000 pounds (actually, it went over budget and might have cost as much as $300,000), the most expensive film this low-budget production company had ever made. But this wasn't softcore porn. It was a horror movie. It received Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, and it is still often considered one of the best psychological horror movies ever made.