REPULSION By Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Compton Productions Director: Roman Polanski Writer: Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux, James Villiers At: New York's Film Forum, 209 W. Houston Street If you want to know how well a woman will get on with a man, or whether she will make a suitable wife, try to find out something about her relationship with her dad. In "Repulsion," a look at an old photo of the principal character, Carol, would be worth a thousand words, but since that photo figures strongly in the dramatic final seconds of the film, its contents will not be revealed here. "Repulsion," a film which receives revivals several times in any given year, is now enjoying a run at New York's Film Forum. The black-and-white work made in 1965 when Roman Polanski was 32 years old has not been restored, revitalized or colored. Presumably its return 32 years after its production is motivated by its qualities. For want of a better terminology "Repulsion" could be called a work of horror, a grand guignol, though by today's Craven standards it is too subtle to hold the interest of the typical targeted audience for the category, the 16-25-year-old set. For adults able to appreciate its caliber, "Repulsion" still packs a wallop. The horror emerges not from outside threats but within the mind of its protagonist, and watching the picture, you can't help thinking that Polanski himself might have had episodes of schizophrenia--Mental deterioration has rarely been so convincingly portrayed and by so lovely a star. The story takes place in a seedy London flat where Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a resident of Brussels, is now living with her sister Kate (Yvonne Furneaux). When Kate tells her sister that she is taking some time off with her boy friend (John Fraser) to visit Italy, Carol is terrified, and like a lost puppy begs Kate not to go. Left alone perhaps for the first time in her life, her fragile mind slowly unwinds. She begins to see the walls crack and, at one point, when she turns on the light, a huge gap seems immediately to materialize as though London were hit by an earthquake. In her hallucinations, men three times succeed in raping her. When she touches the walls, her hand leaves a deep imprint. These symptoms do not appear from nowhere: Carol is repelled by men. When a handsome young guy (Ian Hendry), obsessed with her beauty, kisses her ever so faintly, she runs to her room and brushes her teeth frantically. As you might guess this repulsion toward the opposite sex will lead to no good. Polanski's violence is rarely prominent. He exploits brutality in more subtle ways than Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn, being more concerned with how savagery arises from solitariness, from people cut off, unsupported by any shared view of life and society. His direction is slow and deliberate, exhibiting Carol's change in her London tenement from marginal functioning to withdrawal to ferocity with English patience. And he makes sure to add just the right amount of humor, coming mostly from his depiction of others who are also odd but in harmless ways. There's the old woman with the dog who is a neighbor, who stands for quite a while outside Carol's open door to view a conversation between Carol and her would-be boy friend. An old man with a cane enters her apartment, looks around at the overturned couch, and slowly creeps out. Still another eccentric, seeing Carol lying unconscious, asks with his broad Scottish accent, "Can I get her some brandy?" And the rich old lady, Mrs. Walsh, can drive her beauticians up the wall with her banal but quite comical statements about men: "There's only one thing men want and I don't know why they make such a fuss about it." As for Catherine Deneuve, who appears in virtually every scene, is it possible for any in the audience not to fall in love with such beauty? No matter that she scarcely utters a word, and that when she does she is anything but encouraging or warm. It's simply not possible to be unaffected by her loveliness. We need wonder not at all how she could beckon a cornucopia of male attention simply walking down the street, eyes down, unsmiling. She is well supported by her sister Kate, a thoroughly modern Millie whose man sleeps with her next door, her moans driving Carol bananas. A contemporary audience might find the horror in "Repulsion" occurring too little, too late, but the fun of the movie is in the details, the careful etching of the mind of a woman cracking under the strain of her alienation. Rated R. Running Time: 105 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten
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