While Roman Polanski is a well-known director, for better and worse, this is one of his first features and not as famous as Chinatown or The Pianist, so I thought it would work for the blog. This is a well-done psychological thriller with some very creative visuals and effectively heavy concepts and emotions. Now, those heavy elements might be a bit too much for some, and potentially triggering, so I will definitely note those as we go forward. With all that said, let’s get into the plot.
Carol is a Belgian immigrant living with her sister in England and working as a manicurist. Sadly, she seems to be struggling with social detachment and tends to stay cooped up in the apartment when she’s not working at the salon, all but avoiding Colin, a man who’s clearly interested in her and not afraid to show it (perhaps a little too much). She’s also put off by her sister’s new boyfriend and is visibly uncomfortable whenever she hears them having sex at night (and is frustrated that he keeps leaving his razor in her bathroom glass). One day, she’s put off by a crack she sees in the sidewalk on her way home from work, which leads to Colin noticing her and offering her a ride. She rejects all of his advances and forcefully brushes her teeth, basically having a breakdown. Though her mental state seems to be getting worse, this isn’t really noticed by her sister, who leaves on a vacation with her boyfriend for a while. Carol is left to take care of the apartment, but this doesn’t go well, as she starts to spiral from the isolation, nearly puking at a shirt that the boyfriend left behind, running a bath and letting it overflow, and hallucinating that the walls are cracking, as well as hallucinating a shadowy man in the mirror. Tragically, this last vision leads one that’s so much worse, because as she’s lying in bed, she imagines the man from before breaking into her room and assaulting her in a very disturbing scene. During her next work day, she accidentally slices her client’s finger, which results in her being sent home. Her condition continues to worsen until eventually Colin comes to her door and begs to be let in. When she refuses, he breaks the door down. After attempting to deescalate what he just did, he asks her to marry him, but things aren’t going to go the way he thinks they will. I’ll leave the rest of the film for you to see, but I will bring up some of the imagery that happens afterward, as I think it’s worth talking about and won’t be a major plot spoiler.
The visuals and cinematography in this film really add to the psychological tension of the story. Sudden splits in the walls, rooms appearing different than normal, the walls becoming soft like clay, and even various arms reaching out from them trying to grab Carol. These are all done with tangible effects (when the walls split, they really split) and it gives the film a much more visceral quality that makes us feel just as unsettled as Carol. Enhancing this is the camerawork which often gets up rather close and personal with Carol, making the viewer feel trapped and uncertain about their spatial relationship, much like how she probably feels most of the time. The black and white coloration is also used effectively, with light and shadow creating a stark contrast that leaves the viewer on edge, which is used to great affect during the “assault hallucination.” The assaulter is always shown shrouded in darkness, and the camera never stays on his face long enough for us to get an idea of what he really looks like. Instead, the uncertainty only adds to the disturbing scene, as we can’t entirely wrap our heads around the man, but we know he’s only here to use and harm Carol, making us feel her pain on a deep level. Honestly, we don’t need to know what he exactly looks like, since it’s heavily implied that Carol already knows. Throughout the film, we see a recurring image of a family photo with all of Carol’s close relatives and her as a young girl. While all of the other family members are smiling at the camera, Carol is seen looking off to the side with a detached look on her face. At first, the audience might think that this is only meant to show how far back her detachment stems, but by the end of the film (and having seen everything we’ve seen), the picture seems to depict something else. It might be less that she’s just looking off in detachment and more so that she’s glaring at someone specific, someone who might very well be the assaulter she envisioned. This makes the film an even more heavy and uncomfortable experience once you know this. We’re not just watching a woman slowly lose herself to insanity, we’re watching a rape victim struggling with lingering pain and turmoil. This gives the “grabbing hands,” the “soft and malleable walls,” and the “cracking/ripping walls” a whole new level of disconcert, as well as explains why she’s so frustrated and even repulsed by her sister’s boyfriend and their sex life. What makes this worse is that the men in her life aren’t any better. In Colin’s case, while he clearly cares for her on some level and doesn’t seem rapacious on the surface, he stills comes across rather entitled (getting frustrated at Carol for not going out with him when she’s clearly not doing well), as well as forceful, both trying to kiss her when she didn’t want to, and even breaking down her front door when she refused to unlock it. While this might be somewhat understandable if he was only concerned about her safety (since she had been cooped up in the apartment for days), the way he plays it off afterwards reveals that he mainly just came there to “claim her as his own,” even proposing on the spot. As for the landlord in a later scene, don’t even get me started. I want to leave the later chunk of the film as spoiler-free as possible, since I think you really need to see where this all goes, but I will say, it’s hard to watch Carol face these horrible acts over and over again. As you can see, there’s a lot of potentially triggering material in this film, so I wanted to make sure that you were all aware of that before you watched it. I don’t want anyone to have to relive anything horrible like that again. Sadly, knowing that this is a Polanski film does give the film an uncomfortable real world vibe, especially considering that it’s about a victim of, not just rape, but rape when she was only a child. That aspect alone will cause many people to swear off this film entirely, and I can’t really blame them if they do. I wanted to discuss the film on its own merits just to try and be fair to it, as in a vacuum it is well made, but the real world actions of the director and how related they are to the horrible events in the film do make it much harder to truly evaluate if its worth seeing. Ultimately, I guess it’s up to you. Well, I think that’s about all I have to say about this film, so we’ll end off for this week.
On its own, Repulsion is a well-made and effectively disturbing thriller, but it may be too much for some viewers and the actions of the director make this a difficult film to recommend. If you can separate the art from the artist or think that you can watch a film like this safely, then you will find something very good here, but if you can’t, then this will just be miserable for you, and I don’t blame you. I don’t have a specific film set up yet for next week, but I have a few ideas that I’m sure will be interesting. Until then, take what you can from my evaluation and decide if this is the right film for you.