Repulson (1965)

Directed and co-written by Roman Polanski and released three years before his better known horror masterpiece Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion is a very original, finely crafted, effective, and even landmark physiological horror film in its own right. The story is centered on the character of Carole/Carol Ledoux (very effectively portrayed by Catherine Deneuve) a native of Belgium who lives in a London flat with her older sister Hélène/Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), we are never given much background information on the sisters and why they are in London, but it is implied that their family was once well off but is not now. Carol works in a high end beauty salon doing nails and such for rich older women, Helen's job is never made explicitly clear but seems to be more professional in nature.

Carole, being played as she is by miss Deneuve is a breathtaking beautiful women, yet her character is very shy, keeps to her self, and seems very uncomfortable with anything involving the male sex. Carole is pursed by a nice guy would be suitor named Colin (John Fraser), we never learn how they met (any kind of background information is kept at a minim in this movie, which really works for it), but Colin is very taken with her and tries to see her whenever he can, he acts very patient with Carole but inwardly is quite frustrated by his seeming inability to make real headway with the young lass. Carole doesn't like physically contact, she is repulsed by anything sexual is nature, and is openly cold and disapproving of her sisters boyfriend Michael (Ian Henrdy). Yet Carole does have sexual desire, she just bottles it up, unable for some unexplained reason to deal with it. Deneuve's performance is littered with the tiny, personal ticks and quarks of her character, she constantly plays with her hair, touches her lips, rubs her arms, and does other things to simulate a physical contacts she craves, yet can not truly abide.

Carole in short is a women on the edge, but seems to have been that way for so long that the people who know her, to the extent that anyone in this film can be said to truly know her, just kind of deal with it, and don't make a fuss. They don't realize just how close she is to a psychic break, and she starts to really go over the edge when her sister leaves with her boyfriend for a 10 day vacation in Italy. Carole is morose, doesn't clean up the apartment, misses work, becomes paranoid, starts having visual hallucinations of walls cracking, auditory ones of people in the outside hall at night, and eventually seemingly physical ones of a man she'd seen on the street rapping her. Alone most of the time she retreats more and more into herself, and starts acting increasingly child like, hiding under the bed, reciting singsongy nonsense words to herself, ironing cloths wit the iron unplugged. The few people she interacts with don't know how to help her, or even how to interact with her, and that in the end will prove very dangerous for at least one of the them.

Repulsion is a horror film, but its also a psychological case study, and is grounded in a sense of the real world that makes what happens all the more terrifying. A quite, brilliant piece of writing, acting, and directing, Repulsion still stands as a truly unique and unsettling, piece of innovative, even daring film making. ****