Repulsion (1965)

I have a hard time making up my mind about Polanski's Repulsion, which I re-watched during the Christmas holidays (as an alternative Christmas movie...). On the one hand, there's the psycho-sexual currents, the woman who is seemingly "afraid of men", and men's sexuality and who's fantasy is haunted by rapists. On the other hand, as a psychological horror movie, Repulsion stands its ground as Polanski develops the story and the perspective with a restraint I cannot but admire. Some of the stuff here are actually scary, precisely because Polanski doesn't take the scenes over the top, but lets the camera hover over a sudden image, sometimes accompanied by total silence, and sometimes by frenzy music.

The main character is Carol, played by Catherine Deneuve, who works in a manicure salon in smooth, swinging London. She lives with her sister, who goes on holiday with her boyfriend. Carol dodges her boyfriend, rebuffing his advances and withdraws to the apartment. From the get-go, Carol appears distant, sleep-walking and gradually, reality starts to fall apart. Cracks tear up the wall, the wall turns to porridge, and there are strange visitors there. The apartment becomes a sinister and claustrophobic place, with ticking clocks and rotting food. And then, at some point, the visitors are real and what ensues is gruesome and sad. Repulsion is at its best when it tries to show the world from Carol's perspective, when we are inside her hallucinations, her fear, her disgust, her numbness. The film loses its spell when things get too real - I continuously tried to convince myself that the things I saw where not "really" taking place, but that's not what the film wants. But all in all, this is an absorbing film that uses its limited locations brilliantly and the use of stark color contrast in the black and white cinematography is also efficient (even though one could also argue that many elements seem gratuitous: the skinned rabbit left to rot could be an example, the way the camera focuses on that rabbit and loads it with all kinds of symbolism).

But, what should we think about Polanski's obsession with Carol's sexual fears? Isn't the director here trading on an extremely stereotypical image of women, and instead of really confronting that image of the woman who is afraid of men as sexual beings, the film mystifies it (and eroticizes it, as the camera follows Carol walking around the apartment dressed in a thin night-gown), and shrouds it in gore and creepiness. (I had similar problems with Bunuel's Belle de Jour, which also mystified and sexualized "women's deepest fantasies" in a very problematic way.) On the other hand, this is not the kind of film where the camera gives us full access to the "poor, mad woman" - the camera tantalizes, shows only hints of what's going on, and some things remain in the shadows. And let's not forget that the main character is not only the possessed, the fragile and the one who tries to cleanse herself of male contact: she cuts, she kills. But the film perhaps remains at the level of insinuation, playful hints about fear, sexuality, femininity and domesticity. There's a kind of ambiguity in Repulsion I would account for as cinematic openness (in the good sense) but rather as something that comes terribly close to - titillation (this especially characterizes the rape scenes: they are portrayed as fantasies that express trauma or fear, but also desire in some strange way).

However, Polanski seems to hint at the point that Carol's repulsion for men is embedded in a world of sexism: leering men, men who coo and cajole, men who feel free to take up space and make propositions whenever they want - Polanski does focus on that, too. The men shown in this film are positively creepy types and we see how these men inhabit, invade and rule over urban and domestic space.