Repulsion (1965)

 Roman Polanski's "Repulsion"

After the international success of his 1962 film "Knife in the Water," Roman Polanski relocated from Poland to the United Kingdom in order to continue his film career. Along with writer Gerard Brach, Polanski crafted a script that was set to be his first English-language film. The screenplay was inspired by a woman he and Branch were mutual acquaintances of, a woman suffering from schizophrenia. The film, called "Repulsion," starred the iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve and would end up becoming one of Polanski's greatest works.

The film centers on a Carol, a Belgian woman who works as a beautician in London and lives in an apartment with her older sister, Helen. Carol is a strange, shy girl who is awkward around everyone she meets. She is repulsed by the various men in her life, including Helen's boyfriend, a married man named Michael. When Helen leaves Carol alone in her apartment for the weekend to go on a trip with Michael, Carol descends into insane visions and hallucinations, ultimately leading down dark and violent results.

The plot of the film is relatively simple and deals with a protagonist descending into psychosis. However, the way in which we regard this story is turned on its head by traditional filmmaking practices. Polanski incorporates filmmaking techniques that takes the point of view of the observer and places them directly into the psychological state of the subject. With the Nouvelle Vague movement of late 1950s and early 1960s also came hyper inventive methods of storytelling. With this movement came a hyper realism. Now, the Nouvelle Vague and experimental methods of the 1960s would not on initial thought be thought of as 'hyper-real,' given that the various experimental filmmaking techniques makes the observer aware of the constructed reality of the film they are watching. However, this experimentation and inclusion of handheld camera, avant-garde editing, and 360 rotational depth of the camera in order to see any conceivable observable action allowed for something far more subjective than films that had come previously. With "Repulsion," we are not simply observing a woman's schizophrenic descent into insanity, we are apart of it. This subjectivity revolutionized filmmaking in the 1960s and created a whole new film language thereafter. I am not saying Polanski or "Repulsion" created this standard by any means. I am simply saying they are examples of this new changing film environment.

Because we are viewing the story of this woman in a subjective manner, we experience the madness from her perspective. Because of this, Polanski instilled the film with various tones, fantastical imagery to incorporate her hallucinations, and unfamiliar and intense camera placements to unnerve and offset the audience's perceptions. It was an incredible viewing experience that really has you on edge. There are intense jump-scares that continue to place the viewer in an uncomfortable mood that replicates the instability our protagonist feels. I felt completely on edge and uncomfortable throughout. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed "Repulsion." It was an incredible piece of filmmaking that not only furthered Polanski's career as an auteur, but moved the art of filmmaking forward as a whole.