Review of Repulsion (1965) by Roy J — 15 Jun 2008

Repulsion is a 1965 film directed by Roman Polanski on a scenario by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski. It was Polanski's first English language film, and was filmed in Britain. The cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Yvonne Furneaux, with a cameo appearance by Roman Polanski himself. It is widely considered a masterpiece of the psychological thriller.

Carol (played by a 20-year-old Deneuve) is a young Belgian virgin, who is both repelled and attracted by the idea of sex due to repressed feelings. Timid and fragile, she lives in London with her sister Helen. When Helen leaves on a holiday to Italy with her married boyfriend, Carol is left alone. Isolated at work too, she shuts herself up in their apartment, and becomes a slave of her own paranoid fears, unable to tell fantasy from reality, and begins to hallucinate. She violently kills a would-be suitor, Colin, using a candlestick, and later the landlord who attempts to rape her. When her sister returns home, she finds Carol under her bed, catatonic, and only a shell of her former self.

Loved the Catherine Deneuve appearence here ...