Repulsion Movie Review

Most films about madness glamorize the subject or shift the point of view to a sane observer. Roman Polanski's 1965 British film Repulsion provides a rare screen examination of insanity from the perspective of the person who is going mad. Twenty-one-year-old Catherine Deneuve portrays Carol Ledoux, a quiet manicurist who loses her grip on the most fundamental aspects of her routine life. Bridget, a sympathetic colleague (played by Helen Fraser), tries to cure her blues with a Charlie Chaplin imitation, but Carol is beyond help. When her much-older sister (Yvonne Furneaux, then 37) takes a holiday with her lover (Ian Hendry), she leaves Carol all alone. Sexual repression is the most obvious symptom of her mental anguish, but left to her own devices, Carol plummets into an irreversible nightmare. Deneuve's glacial face and expressive eyes serve her well here; her lovely mask conceals the festering psychosis within and an ordinary flat becomes her prison as she grows progressively more ill. Her landlord (Patrick Wymark) can't read her, a well-meaning suitor (John Fraser) can't read her, and household objects take on a deeply sinister quality. This one will make you want to sleep with the lights on for a MONTH.

1965 105m/B GB Catherine Deneuve, Yvonne Furneaux, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, James Villiers, Renee Houston, Helen Fraser, Mike Pratt, Valerie Taylor; D: Roman Polanski; W: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach, David Stone; C: Gilbert Taylor. VHS, LV