Repulsion

There is no explicit backstory for Carol, other than a family photograph from years earlier.  She is staring in a different direction than the others.  Her face appears almost in shock.  It is a look she will display throughout 1965's REPULSION, co-writer/director Roman Polanski's masterful film, his first in English.  It is a prototype for psychological horror, to me always the most disturbing.  The cinematic language used here is quite stunning in itself, and never flashy.  All the better to frame the tragic days of Ms. Ledoux, who shares a flat in London with her sister.

Carol (Catherine Deneuve) is a beautiful but highly troubled young woman who works as a manicurist during the day, hearing from co-worker and customer alike about what pigs men are.  She needed no further convincing, as her sister Linda's (Yvonne Furneaux) brash boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry) taunts her and an eager suitor named Colin (John Fraser) won't leave her alone.  But are they that lecherous? Carol races upstairs to brush her teeth after Colin grabs a kiss.  She recoils in fear after contact with pretty much any male.  Her only laughter comes from a moment of friendship shared with her female co-worker.  She acts despondent.  She appears as if she wants catharsis, verbally or otherwise.   Questions are repeatedly posed as to what is bothering her, but she never completes her thoughts aloud.

Linda and Michael take a holiday in Italy.  Polanski gives us the image of the Leaning Tower of Pisa a few times.  Carol will begin an odyssey of paranoia in which the real and imagined will play out in the shadows of the apartment, from which she rarely retreats. REPULSION teases as to whether any of it is real. Catharsis does come, Perhaps more than once.  By film's end, you will have answers, and perhaps a bit of damage to your own psyche.

REPULSION is quite an essay on psychological dysfunction and associated paranoia.  But what of its origins? The director invites out own character sketch, and provides imagery to that end.  Polanksi also creates an acid commentary on misogyny and the expected roles of women in society.  And this is also an effectively atmospheric chiller, with some unforgettable shots that should please genre fan and cineaste alike.  Certainly one of the most unsettling motion pictures of the 1960s.