Review of Repulsion (1965) by Shelly — 03 Mar 2010

Polanski is truly a meticulous visual perfectionist - every second of this piece is aesthetically flawless. Although Polanski described the film in simple terms as about a "girl who's crazy but the people around her don't know it," to me it was much, much more than that.

To me, Deneuve's performance spoke volumes about the dissatisfaction of femininity - of how truly empty it can feel just to be a woman. This is a timeless theme, as women have always and will always be viewed as inferior by men on the whole, and women in general must struggle with who they are, truly, without men telling them what they should be.

I firmly believe this was not at all an intended message of the film, considering it was written by two men, but I think this was simply something I gathered from the abyssal emptiness in Deneuve's face striking a chord with something deep inside myself.

I don't think it would be a stretch at all to compare Deneuve's Carol to De Niro's Travis Bickle; these characters grapple with very similar crises of identity, although certainly in astonishingly different ways.

Repulsion is a truly disturbing piece of wholly organic horror, a work that is honestly terrifying in its complete reality.