Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.
Repulsion is a landmark psychological horror film where Polanski crafts an almost entirely internalized narrative. Catherine Deneuve's performance is extraordinary — near-wordless yet utterly convincing in its portrait of disintegrating sanity. Gilbert Taylor's black-and-white cinematography is stunning, using cramped geometry, distorted lenses, and deep shadows to externalize Carole's crumbling psyche with remarkable originality. The film's conception — putting the audience inside a woman's hallucinatory breakdown with minimal exposition — was genuinely singular for 1965 and remains distinctive. The plot is intentionally thin by design, functioning more as psychological immersion than narrative, which slightly limits its score. The ending, while appropriately bleak and enigmatic, is somewhat abrupt and relies on a final image that, while effective, feels slightly less earned than the harrowing buildup deserves.