Unfortunately, no matter how much effort is put into it is not so easy to remove the fingerprint that monsters like Harvey Weinstein leave in the industry. We can try to remove the man from the equation, but his way of operating in aspects such as the Oscar races have created the template that is often still used (and that without going into the fact that workplace toxicity and harassment have not been completely eradicated either) . If it is difficult to remove the impact of people who operate in the back room, imagine the difficulty to do it with those who create significant works.
This is in no way intended to exonerate Roman Polanski, who is still evading justice for a crime for which he was found guilty and for which he chose not to serve time. But it’s impossible to deny that we keep talking about thrillers in polanskian terms, and who, paradoxically, has created works that describe with incredible precision the sensation of paranoia that women experience in the face of social pressures or abuse. Of the latter there are few films as impressive as ‘Repulsion‘.
keep your hands off me
This masterful work of psychological terror It’s one of those seminal films, implanting incredible visual ideas to capture certain sensations, and deeply impacting people with artistic aspirations. A second film that launches him as an extraordinary director, which begins his peculiar trilogy of the apartment and which can be seen streaming on platforms such as acontra+, Filmin or even for free on Plex.
The always captivating Catherine Deneuve plays this enigmatic protagonist whom we meet in medias res (or at the beginning of the end of her story). With her gaze lost during her beautician work, a client asks her if she is sleeping, to which she does not have a conclusive answer. His reality is mired in an incredible paradoxsharing a London apartment with her sister who has a complex relationship with a married man.
This man arouses as many mixed feelings in her as the other man with whom she seems to start a relationship. A mixture of attraction and repulsion that is not clear at first, but Polanski is responsible for having absolute exquisiteness and touches of surrealism. From subtle details such as his zooms to some childhood photographs to bursts of nervousness and anxiety with his restless camera capturing overwhelming moments.
‘Repulsion’: powerful surrealism
That when he does not reach ecstasy through distortions of perception with which develop iconic images, as is the scene in the corridor full of arms trying to catch the protagonist. With these representations, she puts us fully into the perspective of this woman, driven to madness and the constant feeling of panic due to the possibility of being sexually harassed by all those looks full of desire (or simple lasciviousness).
Within the dark fantasy unleashed in his mind, which we see externalized in the film, Polanski achieves forceful realism. The surreal images of him perfectly capture powerful feelings, such as claustrophobia and paranoia. No wonder ‘Repulsion’ still has the strength of him and an impact that continues to shape today’s cinema (sometimes through tributes, like ‘Last Night in Soho’). If it’s not her directly, he does it through all the movies he’s influenced. It is a transcendental work, perhaps the best thing she has done.
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