Review of Repulsion (1965) by Janson J — 10 Dec 2012

Polanski is a polarizing director, unfortunately for nothing related to his obvious skills as a filmmaker. So it's more difficult to praise the man's genius at intimate tension without risking the inevitable sodomy jokes.

But, it remains the same. Polanski is a master of "tight spots". His control of tension in single rooms between a couple of people is astounding. This claustrophobic setting, usually palpable with sexual energy, is what has made his best films so memorable. From "Knife in the Water", to "Rosemary's Baby" (using a doorframe to make an audience tilt their heads, as if they'll be able to see around it), to later day triumphs like "Bitter Moon" and "Death and the Maiden", they show all of the evidence necessary to establish him as one of the late-20th Century cinema masters, and one of the few who can claim to be an heir of Hitchcock without resorting to imitation (looking at you, DePalma).

With this film, Polanski combines psychological horror with the various European New Wave's expressionism. The film manages to inhabit all of the specific British, French and Polanski's own Polish cinema styles of the time, and molded them all into a love letter to "Psycho". Clever manipulation of tone, subtly psychedelic, time/space suspending. Full of sexual phobia, it shows Swinging London as a foreigner would, coming from a less liberated society. But more microcosmically, it's one of the most brilliant portraits of the dissolution of personality that occurs from schizophrenia. And the trick mirror shot is one of the most legendary shocks in horror.