REPULSION
She’s Lost Control
Made in London for the paltry sum of £65,000 – finance supplied by Compton Films, a company with a sideline screening soft porn in Soho – Roman Polanski’s English-language debut centres on Carol (Catherine Deneueve).
This painfully shy young French beautician is forever fending off the unwanted attentions of men, from a would-be beau whose attempts at a kiss leave her frantically brushing her teeth, to a lascivious roadworks labourer (“How about a bit of the other then?”) and a landlord whose solicitousness (“I could be a very good friend to you…”) is a prelude to sexual assault. She shares a flat with her older sister; the latter’s departure on holiday results in a catastrophic and ultimately murderous mental unravelling. Very much a psychological thriller rather than a traditional horror, it’s presented from the point of view of a disordered mind, with the result that its imagery often has a supernatural or surreal aspect: sinister figures suddenly reflected in a wardrobe mirror; limbs reaching out to grab Carol as she passes along a corridor; rooms swelling in size, or the ceiling closing in.