Repulsion focuses on a sexually repressed woman who goes crazy when she is left alone in her apartment while her sister vacations in Italy. Another Polanski, I had high hopes that were crushed. I do not understand what people see in this movie. It is certainly unsettling, frightening, and memorable, but that doesn't make it good. It is atrocious. The sound quality and video quality make it impossible to understand what's going on. The muddy, blurry black and white cinematography coupled with several dubbed-over audio tracks was just too much for me to handle. The music was effective at times, but also often out of place and dated. The clothes, mannerisms, and dialogue also felt outdated. It took about an hour to start getting tense, a very boring hour. The whole movie reminded me of Welles's The Trial, where I actually really did have no idea what was going on.Like The Exorcist, it has scenes that truly terrify, images that stick in your memory, and a buzz about it that nearly forces any film fan to see it. What this movie did well was Deneuve's characterization. She starts off normal, if a bit odd, but nothing you can't empathize with. Then she turns on you and goes absolutely insane, with a vengeance. Much like A Clockwork Orange, you want to feel for the protagonist but find it nearly impossible to do so. Polanski was also able to evoke the most uncomfortable and nauseating feeling of claustrophobia I have experienced in a movie. It absolutely gets under your skin and chills you to the very core; you too feel trapped in this apartment, with sickness and deterioration all around. If you have already heard of this movie, then you are probably going to see it, regardless of the words in my review. If you have not heard of it, you will probably not appreciate the experience. I had heard of it, would have seen it if I had read a negative review from someone I trusted, and then thoroughly regretted the experience, as I do now.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0059646/