Horrorfest 2011: Repulsion

Roman Polanski's REPULSION is more horrifying than your average horror film precisely because most of the action takes place in the mind of the heroine.

The incredibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve stars as a shy, awkward Belgian girl living in London. She shares an apartment with her older sister (Yvonne Furneaux) who is carrying on an affair with a married man (Ian Hendry). Deneuve pleads tentatively for her sister not to leave her alone in the apartment, but the happy couple heads off on a trip to Italy anyway, leaving the scared girl alone with her thoughts.

REPULSION is one of the most effective attempts to show the inner workings of the human mind on the big screen that I've ever seen. Although REPULSION deals with a young woman's descent into outright, violent insanity, which thankfully few of us will ever experience, anyone who has had a long, dark, lonely night should be able to identify at least a little bit. Polanski takes the trappings of the known -- an ordinary, every day apartment -- and makes it into a house of horrors. Food rots, the bathtub overflows, the noises from the street intrude, the telephone and the doorbell rudely interrupt the silence, and even cracks in the walls seem to menace Deneuve.

Most of Deneuve's hang-ups seem to stem from interactions with the opposite sex. She is clearly frightened and unsure of every day interactions with men, and suffers disturbing nightmare images of rape. This can be read as both a somewhat antiquated take on the idea of sexual repression getting the better of an unstable young woman and as an illustration of what the victims of trauma and abuse go through when they haven't been able heal.

The film moves along at a slow, deliberate pace, with minimal dialogue, as the camera lingers on still images as if it is waiting patiently for all hell to break loose. There are just enough surreal scares thrown in to keep the viewer on edge. The pace begins to pick up towards the end of the film, however, and before we know it, the once seemingly normal apartment has transformed from a lonely prison into a gory crime scene.

I can already tell this is the kind of film that's going to haunt me for a while. The sullen, lost look on the poor girl's face in her childhood photograph at the end of the film doesn't really solve any mysteries, but, in a way, it tells the whole story.