Review of Repulsion (1965) by Arin D — 18 Aug 2008

Over the last weekend, I saw two films which focus on paranoid schizophrenia. Yay! The first, featuring a very young Catherine Deneuve, was Polanski's 'Repulsion'. Deneuve's character never generates empathy because she largely seems wooden (not her best acting), and her psychological trauma/deviations seem sui generis.

This is far from the first steps of a true horror film, which would then deconstruct the empathetic protagonist as a victim, further enveloping the audience in the action. This film works mostly because of other elements: a brooding atmosphere of tension, the closed confines of the apartment where most of the action occurs, and excellent music (as good a sense of modernist jazz stylings as Polanski's 'Knife in the Water).

This and 'The Tenant' serve as markers of the director's early interest in the fragility of the psyche. And he hadn't even encountered the Manson Family yet.