Repulsion
d. Roman Polanski, 1965
Roman Polanski's nightmare of a film, Repulsion, is perhaps his greatest achievement, it's certainly more accomplished than his overrated neo-noir Chinatown. Repulsion belongs to a small group of films outside of Buñuel's ouvre that have the courage to have the free-form structure of a dream; these films include Albert Zugsmith's Confessions of an Opium Eater, Ingmar Bergman's Persona, Robert Altman's 3 Women, David Lynch's Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, among others. Polanski's film revolves around the beautiful Catherine Deneuve (from Jacques Demy's glorious musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort) as she conjures a lot of strange fantasies when left alone in an apartment by her sister, who went on vacation with her boyfriend. The film appears to have been a huge influence on Lynch's Eraserhead, in that they both observe how a repressed character functions in the real world (Lynch's character with the parents of the girl he got pregnant, Polanski's in the workplace) but ultimately focus on the time they spend alone in their homes. Frightening, poignant, and ultimately quite disturbing, Repulsion is an unnerving piece of work.
