Film Review - Repulsion

Fig 1. Repulsion Movie Poster (1965)

Roman Polanski's Psychological Horror that is Repulsion (1965) is a movie that wants your discomfort, we follow the character Carol, a young woman living in London with her sister Helen.
We can already tell that she doesn't feel comfortable around other men, especially her sisters boyfriend who finds himself comfortable in their apartment. It isn't until shes been left to look after herself things begin to fall apart: The apartment becomes alive warping in texture and size, shes is visited by strangers in the night for unwanted sexual acts, it moulds her, feeds off of her fears and sculpts her into a killer.

Figure 2

From the beginning to the end we experience everything almost through Carol's eyes, and we can notice the growth in her despise for men, the intensity of her paranoia and how she ends up trapping herself in this apartment which is like this emotional mental prison for her. "She exhibits a pathological shyness and repression that slowly spiral into madness after her sister leaves on holiday. Carol’s dementia creates perplexing hallucinations sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts after - Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire." - (Morgan, 2011) Many objects and people from the outside world are implemented into her hallucination period: You have the Workman who catcalls her near the beginning, he becomes the attacker that visits her in the night; the crack in the floor she stares down at becomes the cracks in her apartment walls that separate and become more enlarged and almost whole, it shows that current objects from the real world are her source for these fears, her mind shapes them into this monster that is the man that visits her, that the walls of her caged home that's breaking apart no longer ensuring her safety.

Figure 3.

Eventually her hallucinations affect her actions and intentions in real life, to the point of harming others, Colin who throughout the film is infatuated with Carol tries to get to know her more but in questionable ways, his intentions are innocent and sweet though to a point where her breaks down her door to confess it ends in his death. "She always sees men as a threat, and eventually takes a knife to the guilty – her bullying landlord – and innocent – her nice would-be boyfriend – alike. " (Newman, 2007) Plus, it's questionable to what Carol has actually done to make Colin so interested and go so far for her since she keeps to herself and mainly focuses on thing in the distance of her mind..
This is applicable to when the Landlord attacked her, again Carol didn't respond or gesture anything to him until he acted upon her, this is when she resisted and fought back. This demonstrates her mindset being black and white, she is either non responsive and still in her movement but the moment an act is taken upon her that she feels is ill-willed she would turn into this attacker.

Figure. 4

It's never clearly mentioned or explained why Carol acts this way, only subtly hinted at in an of family photo, we get a closer shot of her expression in the last shot as it grows closer to her face, she's looking off into the distance or rather at someone with disgust whom is also in the photo, it can be speculated that something in her childhood may have happened to her that traumatised her or made her act this way, "Polanski just closes in on a family photograph to drop hints about the roots of the blonde angel’s insanity. Rather than making a mad person scary, the film terrifies by giving an audience a sense of what it’s like to lose sanity." (Newman, 2007) it's possible that when she has trusted family around such as her sister she is grounded but when she's on her own she's disconnected from reality so it's a possibility that there is this repression of a traumatised past incident that deeply scarred her.

Bibliography:

Morgan, Kim (2011) - Roman Polanski Understands Women: Repulsion At: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.html [Accessed: 03/12/17]

Newman, Kim (2007) - Repulsion Review At: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/repulsion/review/ [Accessed: 03/12/17]

Newman, Kim (2007) - Repulsion Review At: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/repulsion/review/ [Accessed: 03/12/17]

Illustration:

Figure 1. - Repulsion Movie Poster (1965) - [Movie Poster]

Figure 2. - Repulsion (1965) - [Still]

Figure 3. - Repulsion (1965) - [Still]

Figure 4. - Repulsion (1965) - [Still]