A technically impressive but problematic and shallow character study about sexual abuse. Repulsion is hugely influential on everything from giallos to Suspiria to the early American slashers (Halloween, Elm Street) to Twin Peaks to Black Swan to It Follows. Its a favorite art-horror film and hailed as an early "masterpiece" from Roman Polanski.
You can't separate Polanski's statutory rape of a female child from whatever statement he made in Repulsion. Polanski delves deep into the Daddy Issues of a sexually damaged young girl and critics praised him for this early examination of "rape culture", but there's a clear criminal fetishization of his female protagonist's emotional weakness and sexual unavailability that is highly disturbing. Its disgusting that she is made sympathetic by surviving a highly unrealistic/convenient sexual attack and must be rescued by a father figure. This film is less about women and their victimhood by men than Polanski's romantic dream of sexually tortured young girls.
I can't call it a masterpiece for its troubling psychology and that its derivative of the even better horror films "Marnie" and "Carnival of Souls". Polanski was a post-modernist who reinterpreted films for an art-house crowd and often got too much credit for simply making the films more cynical and violent (As if the influence of De Palma and Tarantino wasn't clear enough).
The film inspired 100 great films made by well-meaning male "feminists" of damsels acting out man-fearing fantasies, but how many are actually helpful to women? Are they anti-rape or do they simply exploit rape to set up violence in a faux-intellectual/faux-moralist style? I mean the purpose of Repulsion was to show a man's view of man's abuse of women. Gradually we ended up with complex and liberated heroines fighting off male oppression and maybe we owe films like Repulsion with starting the topic in film. But that doesn't mean these film aren't offensive or dated or reprehensible.
With Repulsion, Polanski laid the template for a new style of oppressive, paranoid, psycho-sexual horror and influenced everything that came later. Its still pretty effective although its had its ideas perfected by Polanski and others. But Repulsion is probably more tasteful, restrained, personal and ultimately creepy given the revelations about Polanski. The film remains a twisted yet important piece of cinema history like its creator.
You can't separate Polanski's statutory rape of a female child from whatever statement he made in Repulsion. Polanski delves deep into the Daddy Issues of a sexually damaged young girl and critics praised him for this early examination of "rape culture", but there's a clear criminal fetishization of his female protagonist's emotional weakness and sexual unavailability that is highly disturbing. Its disgusting that she is made sympathetic by surviving a highly unrealistic/convenient sexual attack and must be rescued by a father figure. This film is less about women and their victimhood by men than Polanski's romantic dream of sexually tortured young girls.
I can't call it a masterpiece for its troubling psychology and that its derivative of the even better horror films "Marnie" and "Carnival of Souls". Polanski was a post-modernist who reinterpreted films for an art-house crowd and often got too much credit for simply making the films more cynical and violent (As if the influence of De Palma and Tarantino wasn't clear enough).
The film inspired 100 great films made by well-meaning male "feminists" of damsels acting out man-fearing fantasies, but how many are actually helpful to women? Are they anti-rape or do they simply exploit rape to set up violence in a faux-intellectual/faux-moralist style? I mean the purpose of Repulsion was to show a man's view of man's abuse of women. Gradually we ended up with complex and liberated heroines fighting off male oppression and maybe we owe films like Repulsion with starting the topic in film. But that doesn't mean these film aren't offensive or dated or reprehensible.
With Repulsion, Polanski laid the template for a new style of oppressive, paranoid, psycho-sexual horror and influenced everything that came later. Its still pretty effective although its had its ideas perfected by Polanski and others. But Repulsion is probably more tasteful, restrained, personal and ultimately creepy given the revelations about Polanski. The film remains a twisted yet important piece of cinema history like its creator.