Repulsion (1965)
"We must get this crack mended..."
More Polanski — at his very best. London, 1965. Catherine Deneuve stars in a disturbing, surrealist tale of shabby mansion flats and psychological disintegration.
In the early 1990s, I shared a stuccoed Pimlico maisonette, halfway down Claverton Street, on the left-hand side, a stone’s throw from the River Thames. There were two of us. Yours truly (then an impoverished furniture porter at Phillips auctioneers) and a City of London whizz-woman, a super-bright fund manager, glued to her laptop and not much else. Despite my flatmate’s considerable salary, it was, otherwise, in terms of decoration, a tale of genteel poverty à la Colefax & Fowler. Grimy chintz curtains, beige fitted carpets (stained); nick-nacks (chipped); mahogany (scratched); a longcase clock (broken) and dust, dust, dust. Mushrooms sprouted in the rusted ‘kitchenette’ (estate agent speak), a handy alternative to the Pimlico Tesco. Pigeons roosted in the ceiling directly above my bed — there was a hole — so that in the morning, one awoke to a light dusting of creamy pigeon shit.
I have no idea if places like this still exist. These days, I suspect, it’s more a tale of IKEA, white walls and huge television sets. But it’s exactly this world — as it was — which Polanski recreates in Repulsion (1965), the world of the shabby rented London flat, in his brilliant — and disturbing — psychological surrealist thriller, although ‘horror’ might, perhaps, be more apt. But then, so often, it’s the greatest films which defy description.
Carol (Catherine Deneuve) is a shy Belgian early twenty-something, sharing a flat with her sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux, La Dolce Vita), and she’s an assistant in a beauty salon in South Kensington, pampering spoilt middle-aged women with pedicures and skin treatments and slices of cucumber — that extraordinary thing women do to their eyes, which I can never get my head round. And Carol’s sweet and vulnerable. Her English ain’t great, and she bites her nails, and she’s alone in a big foreign city, with few friends and a bitchy older sister. You feel desperately sorry for her.
And, they’re behind on the rent. It’s a slightly squalid existence. Their grotty mansion flat looks out onto a convent, and Big Sis brings home her (married) Jag-driving boyfriend (Ian Hendry) to have sex. There’s also something especially disturbing about bathrooms, I think. The drip of the tap, razor blades, cracked tiles, a mouldy shower curtain, steamed-up mirrored wall cabinets, rusty Edwardian bathtubs on legs, asparagus suites. Brides in the Bath Smith.
