Film Review: Repulsion
1965. 100 mins.
A beautiful Belgian manicurist has serious mental health problems in sixties London. That is the premise for Polankski’s harrowing and voyeuristic study of psychosis-related illness, and the more Carol’s nightmare unravels, the more you are hooked into her story (despite, due to the films unremittingly realistic account of her problems, an at times intense feeling to look away, a feeling of skin-crawling repulsion).
The film is shot in black and white, and almost entirely parched of melodrama and dramatic elaboration. It is (surprisingly, given its vintage) an unflinching and realistic dissection of a young woman’s turbulent emotions, as she gradually descends from social detachment into sexual paranoia, hallucinations and eventually psychotic madness. French actress Catherine Deneuve (Belle De Jour, Indochine) plays the lead to perfection — pay attention to her body language and mannerisms, her facial expressions and ruffled hair and distant eyes — and she does actually seem to be intensely in another world as she drifts distantly and further away from her life into seclusion — where her problems intensify dramatically.
I suppose what makes this so disturbing to view is the helplessness you feel: in most other cases of the damsel in distress (be it from prostitution, drugs or an abusive partner) you keep watching in the hope there will be a solution to her downward spiral. With the enemy inside, though (and the knowledge that mental health care in the 1960s — or even today — wasn’t likely to cure a person with her problems), there is little salvation in sight.
Needless to say this isn’t a film to watch with your grandmother. It isn’t something you will really “enjoy”, but (I suppose in a similar manner to Schindler’s List) it is something you will be glad you have seen.
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