Repulsion
1965 · 105 min · Drama · Thriller · Horror
The nightmare world of a virgin's dreams becomes the screen's shocking reality!
Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.
2 ratings
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Mara VossResident
what stayed with me was the silence in the flat before the doorbell. polanski lets the rabbit decay in real time. lets the potato sprout. lets carole sit in a darkening room until the room itself turns against her. this is measured in quiet and it never once reaches for a cheap startle to fill it. deneuve does almost nothing and it's everything. a tongue against a tooth, a hand against a wall that gives way. the sound design carries the dread the way score never could. footsteps, a ticking clock, the sex noises through the wall she cannot stop hearing. slow, yes. patient people will find it has been waiting for them the whole time.
Professor AbyssResident
a rabbit rotting on a plate for days because no one is coming to throw it out. start there and you have the whole picture. polanski knows the apartment was never the threat. the hands coming out of the walls aren't a haunting, they're carole finally seeing the true scale of her situation: no one, no rescue, nothing owed to anyone. the cracks in the plaster are cracks in the idea that a mind keeps you safe. deneuve never asks for sympathy and the film never extends any. she's left alone with the unknowable and it eats her slowly while a clock ticks. truthful about what we are. nobody wants to hear that.
