Repulsion (1965) Jeanne Dielman for the beat ‘60s with a supremely knotty director in tow (Review)

Before we begin, I feel as though my review must be prefaced with a trigger warning; Repulsion is not exactly light viewing. As you may know, Repulsion was directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a man whose directorial back-catalogue contains some of the most celebrated examples of the cinematic medium. If you already know this, there’s a high chance you’ll also be aware that Polanski is a convicted sexual predator and paedophile who remains a fugitive from the U.S. justice system to this day. Whenever one of Polanski’s critically acclaimed works gets a shiny new home media release or cinema reissue, that age-old debate on the ethics of “separating the art from the artist” starts to make the rounds once again in critical circles; that seemingly never-resolved moral quandary of how, or even “if”, a piece of media can be celebrated without condoning and platforming the creator behind it.

This all being said, Repulsion is a film which cannot easily be separated from the context of Polanski’s crimes; its themes of sexual assault, misogyny, and trauma in regards to abuse, are so prominent and so central to the work as a whole that it becomes hard, in hindsight, to ignore the film’s unfortunate real-life parallels. Which is a shame, because if it were not for that factor, I would have instead opened this review with a statement on just how well Repulsion has aged as a narrative about living as a woman in the U.K.

Repulsion tells the story of Carol (played superbly by a young Catherine Deneuve), an introverted Belgian immigrant who lives in a London apartment with her older, more socially outgoing sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). Unlike many of her peers, Helen included, Carol has no interest in men, nor any desire for sexual intimacy at all – making her conventionally attractive looks more of a more of a curse than a blessing, particularly in regards to unwanted attention from Colin (John Fraser), a local lad who harbours an unrequited lust towards our anxious lead. When the older sister leaves for a break in Italy with her lover, a married man named Michael (Ian Hendry), Carol is left alone with her troubled thoughts in the apartment; she feels scared, trapped and helpless, and these feelings begin to manifest in the form of threats both real and imagined, marking the beginning of a downward spiral towards the point of no return…

It’s shocking stuff, not least because of Deneuve’s terrific and deeply sympathetic turn as Carol – her performance is clearly one of the most iconic depictions of a woman going through a psychotic break that has been put to celluloid. Though the film’s marketing courts sensationalist shock-factor, portraying its female lead as a hysterical razor-wielding thrill-killer “driven beyond the edge of reason by the violence of her own desires”, you should not be fooled, dear reader – Carol is the closest thing that Repulsion has to a hero, and our sympathy lies with her, regardless of what many contemporary critics would have believed. Her plight as a woman in a man’s world remains palpable and relatable to this day, and her struggles may even hit harder for modern-day viewers (myself one of them) than they did upon the film’s release back in ‘65; not to mention the fact that the film tackles the subject matter of sex-repulsion and asexuality, both of which are sadly rarely represented even in the largely progressive world of genre film.

For about 50 minutes, Repulsion is a slow yet fairly compelling kitchen-sink psychodrama – Jeanne Dielman for the beat ‘60s, if you will – but once Carol is left with the flat to herself, we see a genre-shift into full-blown psychological horror picture full of inventively shocking imagery and some truly impressive jump-scares; it’s absolutely no surprise as to why Repulsion is still regarded as a classic of cinematic terror. As the walls of the apartment begin to crack open, and shadowy intruders make their presence known in harrowingly violent fashion, the film never loses sight of its human and deeply feminist core – after all, Carol might be going crazy, but is it really more “crazy” to lose your mind in the face of patriarchal oppression and enforced social conformity than to just accept your situation and pretend that everything is fine?

All-in-all, Repulsion is a well-made, solid, somewhat poignant little horror-thriller, and judging by the clips of the film featured in the archival documentary A British Horror Film (2003), the restoration work by Criterion for this new release is incredibly welcome – this is likely the best that Repulsion has ever looked. The aforementioned doc is included as a bonus feature on the Criterion disc, and part of me sincerely wishes that I hadn’t decided to watch it prior to writing this review, because it leads me to believe that the success of Repulsion as a feminist depiction of a woman’s torment is merely a happy accident. Made for an earlier DVD release of the film in 2003, A British Horror Film features interviews with several (all-male) members of the film’s production, including director Polanski. From the beginning of the documentary, it becomes apparent that Polanski, as well as producer Gene Gutowski, believe Carol to be the villain of their film, a man-killing psychopath hidden behind an innocent “good-girl” persona, and the more you listen, the more uncomfortable their takes become. It’s shocking that this documentary even exists, given Polanski fled the U.S. to avoid further sexual assault charges a whole 26 years prior to its production, and it becomes clear watching him here that he’s a charmless, smug individual representative of all the worst possible things associated with the word “auteur”. Listening to the way that Polanski talks about women in this extra, it’s no wonder that Catherine Deneuve isn’t present to provide any comment on her time on set.

Naturally, there’s been controversy ever since Criterion announced they were going to be releasing Repulsion. If you look at the page for the film on the Criterion Collection website, you’ll notice that they’ve openly stated that their special-edition release is “director approved”, and given Polanski’s direct involvement with the transfer used, as well as the audio commentary, I’ve got this sinking feeling that he actively profits from this release – meaning that I cannot whole-heartedly recommend that you purchase the new Criterion edition of Repulsion. Despite the subject matter of the film, all the material on the Criterion disc of Repulsion seems to conveniently skirt over the fact that Roman Polanski, the film’s creator, is the exact kind of predator that we see portrayed horrifyingly in the movie itself, and Criterion don’t seem to have really thought twice about working with him in spite of this. It’s also noticeable that, being a film about womens’ struggles with mental health and sexual abuse, there’s a distinct lack of involvement from women on Criterion’s Blu-Ray, in the year 2023 no less; there’s no female perspective on how the film resonates present on this disc, nor on any kind of supplementary booklet. Writers like Kier-La Janisse, Kat Ellinger and B.J. Colangelo, to name a few, have written and spoken on Repulsion before and specialise in writing on the themes in female-driven horror that are prevalent here, so it seems more than a little unusual that not one of them, let alone anyone in their field, was contacted for their word.

This isn’t me trying to call out or “cancel” Criterion, as some may allege, but rather me asking them to take a moment to think about what they’re doing with Repulsion in regards to future releases, and why they’re defending and actively working with a convicted felon and child molester simply because of the quality and classic status of a film that he made 58 years ago. The Criterion Collection has become a household name to film fans, and the respect that said name commands has given the people behind it a rare and elusive opportunity to re-write the canon of film as we know it for future generations, and for the most part, they do; Criterion have, in part, been instrumental in diversifying the landscape of cinema history as film fans know it, and have preserved and brought to light works by women, black directors, queer filmmakers and countless more under-represented creatives whose work may have otherwise been lost to the sands of time. The story of film is no longer exclusively told by middle-class cis-het white men, so why is it still being told with a powerful sex offender as one of its heroes?

Robyn’s Archive: Repulsion (1965)