Repulsion
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| Repulsion | |
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Roman Polanski |
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| Written by | Roman Polanski & Gerard Brach (original screenplay), David Stone (adaptation) |
| Starring | Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser |
| Music by | Chico Hamilton |
| Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor |
| Editing by | Alastair McIntyre |
| Distributed by | Compton Films (U.K.), Columbia Pictures (U.S.A.) |
| Release date(s) | January 1965 (UK) |
| Running time | 104 min |
| Country | U.K. |
| Language | English |
Repulsion is a 1965 film directed by Roman Polanski on a scenario by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski. It was Polanski's first English language film, and was filmed in Britain. The cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Yvonne Furneaux, with a cameo appearance by Roman Polanski himself. It is widely considered a masterpiece of the psychological thriller genre.
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[edit] Plot
Carol (played by a 20-year-old Deneuve) is a young Belgian woman, who is both repelled and attracted by the idea of sex due to repressed memories. Timid and fragile, she lives in London with her sister Helen (Furneaux). When Helen leaves on a holiday to Italy with her married boyfriend (Hendry), Carol is left alone. Isolated at work too, she shuts herself up in their apartment, and becomes a slave of her own paranoid fears. As Carol becomes increasingly psychotic and unable to tell fantasy from reality, she begins to hallucinate. She violently kills a would-be suitor, Colin (Fraser), using a candlestick, and later the landlord (Patrick Wymark) who attempts to rape her. When her sister returns home, she finds Carol under her bed, catatonic, and only a shell of her former self.
At the end, Polanski shows a photograph of the young Carol, hinting at a childhood of sexual abuse, which would later resurface in Chinatown.
[edit] Cast
- Catherine Deneuve as Carole Ledoux
- Ian Hendry as Michael
- John Fraser as Colin
- Yvonne Furneaux as Hélène Ledoux
- Patrick Wymark as Landlord
- Renee Houston as Miss Balch
- Valerie Taylor as Madame Denise
- James Villiers as John
- Helen Fraser as Bridget
- Hugh Futcher as Reggie
- Monica Merlin as Mrs. Rendlesham
- Imogen Graham as Manicurist
- Mike Pratt as Workman
[edit] Imagery
Repulsion is the first of Polanski's "apartment trilogy" (the other two being Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant).[1] As in those two films, the horrors are not external threats, but rather the horrors that lie within the minds of the protagonists.
[edit] Release
The film is scheduled to be released on DVD from The Criterion Collection in July 2009.[2]
[edit] Awards
- 1965: Berlin International Film Festival, FIPRESCI Prize, Silver Berlin Bear.
[edit] Similar films
- Rosemary's Baby (1968), by Roman Polanski.
- π (1998), by Darren Aronofsky, includes spoofs.
- May (2002), by Lucky McKee, was heavily influenced by the film, and has a similar motif of the protagonist's apartment mirroring her mental state.
- Music videos for The Cardigans' "Hanging Around" and Metric's "Monster Hospital" were directly inspired by the film.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Orr, John; Ostrowska, Elżbieta (2006). The Cinema of Roman Polanski. Wallflower Press. p. 122.
- ^ http://www.criterion.com/films/404
[edit] External links
- Repulsion at the Internet Movie Database
- Repulsion at Allmovie
- BFI gallery
- Images from the movie
- Repulsion at Rotten Tomatoes
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