Repulsion (DVD)

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If I had to sum up the essence of Roman Polanski´s "Repulsion" (1965) in three words, they would be: DO NOT ENTER.

A stunningly beautiful 21 year old Catherine Deneuve plays Carol, a Belgian native who lives in London with her older sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux.) Carol works at a beauty salon and, since she looks like a 21 year old Catherine Deneuve, has a male caller eagerly following her wherever she goes. But poor Colin (John Fraser) just can´t make any progress with the object of his desire. Carol doesn´t just rebuff his advances; she barely seems to be aware of his existence. Then again Carol´s world is a rather narrow one and it only gets narrower when her sister goes on vacation with boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry.)

Almost the instant Carol is left on her own, she begins a rapid descent into madness much like Jack Torrance the instant he sets foot in The Overlook in "The Shining." But Jack was already a bit of a dull boy before he wound that station wagon into the Colorado mountains. Ditto Carol. Prone to the occasional space out and desperately clingy to her older sister, Carol´s stretched taut as a trip wire. As Michael says, "She´s a bit strung up, isn´t she?" You don´t know the half of it, brother.

If you had to pinpoint the exact moment where it all went wrong for Carol, you´d probably have to back to the delivery room, but in the film the scale tips when she lies in bed and listens to her sister´s orgasmic moans from the next room. Carol twirls her hair like a nervous little girl and buries her face in the pillow but the OHH OHH OHHs thunder like sledgehammers. Polanski cuts to ominous close-ups of objects in Carol´s bedroom: an overhead light, a dresser, the fireplace. All innocuous objects that now take on a menacing aura that permeates the rest of the film.

Alone, Carol proves incapable of performing even the most basic functions of daily life. The room turns into a fly-infested, water-logged trash heap. Nightmare visions intrude on her waking life, but she has already abandoned any effort to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Unable to defend this boundary (real/unreal, sane/insane), she vigorously polices all others, and devotes all of her effort to preventing anyone from entering either her apartment or her virgin body. Everyone is out to get her and get in her and the very thought of it… repulses her.

A story of sexual repression of such magnitude necessarily treads on Freudian ground but Polanski resists any urge to plumb the psychological depths of his tortured protagonist. The only hint we have of any trauma in her past is a childhood picture in which Carol appears to be staring into the distance, oblivious to the family around her. Read what you want to into it, but you´re just guessing.

Some viewers might be frustrated that the "why" is neither answered nor even asked, but Polanski is more interested in creating and constantly amping up a sense of claustrophobic terror. The film is a smashing success in this regard. Deneuve´s blank stare (she was already perfecting her trademark ice-cold blonde persona) and largely mute performance provides the void for Polanski to fill with his sleight of hand tricks. Polanski´s masterful mise-en-scene turns a modern apartment into a shadowy, organic prison. The walls don´t close in on Carol but rather reach out to grope her. Flailing arms jut out through plaster like in Jean Cocteau´s "Beauty and the Beast." When the walls actually crack apart, it seems a little hokey but there´s no doubt that watching "Repulsion" is a nerve-wracking experience.

Polanski also makes great use of the soundtrack. A discordant jazz score jangles the nerves in key scenes. Even more powerful, sounds constantly intrude from off-screen and from just outside the apartment. I think the effect is lost a bit on DVD, but ultimately it´s the key to creating and maintaining the film´s frantic claustrophobia. Occasional evidence of the outside world provides the contrast needed to remind us of just how isolated, how alone, how vulnerable Carol is.