Main Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux
Release Year: 1965
Country: UK
Run Time: 105 minutes
Plot
The first English-language film of director Roman Polanski is a psychological thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and his own later film Rosemary's Baby (1968). Catherine Deneuve stars as Carol Ledoux, a Belgian manicurist living with her sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), in a London flat. Simultaneously attracted and repulsed by sex, Carol is a virgin who finds her sister's relationship with a married man, Michael (Ian Hendry), extremely disturbing. When her sister and Michael go on holiday, Carol begins to disintegrate mentally, hallucinating bizarre encounters, being forced into taking a sabbatical from her job and ultimately committing a pair of murders in her deranged state. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Review
Roman Polanski's terror classic shows us, in simple but effective terms, the horrors that lurk inside a troubled psyche. While obviously working on a shoestring budget, Polanski recreates with disturbing impact the strange and unsettling horror of a mind that has begun to turn upon itself. Carol Ledoux (played brilliantly by Catherine Deneuve) is not on a strong emotional footing as the story begins: she's at once compelled by and terrified of her sexual needs, and she displays an unhappy emotional distance from others that suggests a mild form of autism. When Carol is left alone after her sister leaves on vacation, her fragile connection with the rest of the world gives way, and. as she isolates herself in her apartment, Carol's mind fragments into a hallucinatory state, which Polanski manifests on-screen with an apt surrealism. Within the increasingly grim and shadowy confines of the flat, revolting images of rotting food and buzzing flies mingle with things that shouldn't or couldn't actually be there, and Polanski's impressionistic use of odd angles, visual distortion, and blunt, shocking violence make Carol's world seem as frighteningly alien to us as it must be to her. Polanski is aided immeasurably by Deneuve's performance; she's the only person onscreen for a large percentage of the movie, and the understated realism of her madness makes the film all the more convincing, demonstrating that the human mind can conjure images far more terrifying than can a special effects crew with a huge budget. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Renee Houston - Miss Balch; Helen Fraser - Bridget; Valerie Taylor - Mme. Denise; James Villiers - John; Hugh Futcher - Reggie; Monica Merlin - Mrs. Rendlesham; Imogen Graham - Manicurist; Mike Pratt - Workman; Roman Polanski - Spoons Player
Credit
Seamus Flannery - Art Director, Sam Waynberg - Associate Producer, Roman Polanski - Director, Alastair McIntyre - Editor, Chico Hamilton - Composer (Music Score), Chico Hamilton - Musical Direction/Supervision, Tom Smith - Makeup, Gilbert Taylor - Cinematographer, Gene Gutowski - Producer, Gérard Brach - Screenwriter, Roman Polanski - Screenwriter, David Stone - Screenwriter, Hercules Bellville - Assistant Director
Carol (Catherine Deneuve), is a young Belgian woman who lives in Kensington, London, with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). She suffers from androphobia (the fear of men), and finds repulsive interaction with, or the mention of, males. Throughout the film, innuendos derived from her neurotic, fragile mien hint that the underlying reason for this asocial behavior lies in childhood trauma, although this is never confirmed, and the photograph merely depicts a solemn, disturbed young girl who is uninterested in the taking of a family photograph.
When Helen, with whom Carol shares a strained relationship, leaves on a holiday to Italy with her married boyfriend (Hendry), Carol is left to withdraw deeper into her own paranoia. What was phobic neurosis now unveils as full-fledged psychosis. She withdraws from work, refuses to leave her apartment, and experiences spiraling hallucinations. Food rots around her and her sister's flat falls to shambles. She bludgeons a would-be suitor to death with a candlestick, and later, fends off the sexual advances of her landlord, played by Patrick Wymark, by slashing him to death with a cut-throat razor.
When Helen returns, she discovers the dead men's bodies and finds Carol hidden under her bed. Carol appears catatonic, only a shell of her former self. Polanski turns his audience to the photograph again, zooming in on Carol's face as a child. As the focus gets tighter, one realizes that this is not a typical family photo – Carol is offset from the rest of the family with the look of a trapped animal – and Carol has had these problems for a long time.
Repulsion is the first of Polanski's "apartment trilogy" (the other two being Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant (Le Locataire)).[1] As in those two films, the horrors are not external threats, but rather the horrors that lie within the minds of the protagonists. The film is shot in black and white, increasingly adopting the perspective of its protagonist. The dream sequences are particularly intense. [2]
Awards and reception
At the 1965 Berlin International Film Festival, Repulsion won both the FIPRESCI Prize and the Silver Berlin Bear-Extraordinary Jury Prize.[3] The film paved the way for Polanski's entry into the cinemas of Western Europe and drew attention to the Catherine Deneuve with her performance.[2]
