Repulsion: Twisted, atmospheric, and frightening

Repulsion starts with a close-up of an eye, and the credits emanate out of the cornea, the eyes unblinking and then blinking, confused, tentative, figuring out, and then steadily looking out. Till the words, Roman Polanski flashes across, and we immediately know we are in the hands of a director who knows what he is out to achieve.

The eyes are Carol's (Catherine Deneuve), a beautiful but withdrawn manicurist, who is largely taciturn at work, and has a worrying vacuity as she goes about her chores in the world. She stays with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), who has a married boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry) who Carol dislikes intensely. Carol also has an admirer Colin (John Fraser) who is pursuing her diligently but without much success — more often rebuffed, and additionally teased about his failures endlessly by his friends. And there’s a landlord who has threatened to throw her sister out if she doesn’t take care of the outstanding rental.

The unusual thing about Carol is her reaction to male attention. A kiss from her maybe-boyfriend gets her running to rinse her mouth, touching and smelling Michael's shirt makes her vomit, and she cannot even stand having his brush and razor in the bathroom. Carol is completely oblivious to the catcalls in the broken streets of London. And then there are the sounds of Helen's moaning as she and her boyfriend make love, with Carol lying awake with her eyes wide open in the dark, clutching at her pillow, unable to stand these sounds of intimacy. This is the world of Carol.

The inflexion point occurs when her sister goes for a holiday with Michael, despite Carol’s entreaties not to leave. Something changes after that — something which had been held back by her sister's congenial presence. Something pent-up then finds its release. She plays truant at work and closes herself in her flat. And the problems commence.

Repulsion is really the slow unravelling of a mind. There is a sense of stream-of-consciousness in the flow of the movie, but there is also a tightening of the throat as it unravels. If it is not Carol's mind which plays tricks, then it is the myriad sounds of the world which keep impinging into the flat's sepulchral silence.  There is water dripping or footsteps which seem to be inside the flat, there's the laughter of the nuns in a cloister next door as they play in their breaks or of flies buzzing over left-over meat. It’s the shouts of children in the corridor or the continuous whoosh of the elevator as it continues to move along its shaft day-in-day-out. Carol progressively grows hyper-sensitive to even the slightest scrap of noise.

The camera is unflinching and becomes a stalker at times, and a voyeur at others. But it never stops examining Carol. Often with curiosity, often with consternation. Often quietly, waiting for things to happen to her, or by her. It observes the tiniest of movements — when she enters her apartment it goes down to the floor level and sees her kick open her shoes and shrug off her jacket and then go to the window to see the nuns playing with a ball in a churchyard. The apartment seems to grow smaller and the walls threatening.

And then into this claustrophobic world enter men — real, hallucinatory, abusive, loving. And Carol unravels instinctively, violently, murderously.

Repulsion was Polanski's first English language film and was shot entirely in London. He had a tough time selling the script. It was finally accepted by a couple of producers more known for producing and distributing soft porn. What they got instead was neither pure horror nor a pure thriller but an artistic creation awash in shadows and a slow psychological unthreading of a mind which did not itself. The film had Catherine Deneuve in a role which she completely inhabited. The remarkable thing about her acting was the way she humanises the empty vacant Carol, as she comes apart at the seams, and starts on her murderous spree.  The legend goes that Polanski did not let her meet any men, even prohibiting her visits to her latest lover, director Robert Vadim, who was in Paris. So she could inhabit her obsessive role more intimately.

Repulsion would be a lesser film, if it wasn't for the incredibly moody cinematography by Gilbert Taylor, as he keeps the flat awash in intractable shadows and slivers of light which only seem to further needle the tension in Carol's psyche. The art direction (by Seamus Flannery) follows the progression of Carol's behaviour as the flat becomes a war zone, a symbol of Carol's disintegrating mind. More than the mystery and the horror, there is a slow mournfulness which permeates the film and makes it so tangible. It is the remarkable conjoined feat of the writing, acting and direction that you want to reach out to Carol to console her that, hark, everyone is not so bad.

Repulsion telescopes into a denouement where the entirety of Carol's history tumbles out in one stunning last revelation. This film is known as one of Polanski's best for no small reason.

Trivia:

1. Repulsion has the first depiction of female orgasm (though only in sound) to be ever passed by the British Board of Film Censors.
2. When Roman Polanski first announced Repulsion, he said that the actress he was looking for should have to be "an angel with a slightly soiled halo".
3. Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant along with Repulsion form what Walter Benjamin called “the horror of apartments”.

Watch Repulsion here.

(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of OTTplay)

(Written by Sunil Bhandari, a published poet and host of the podcast ‘Uncut Poetry’)