Horror Actressing: Catherine Deneuve in "Repulsion"
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 2:15PM by Jason Adams
Oh, Repulsion! Prescient, precious Repulsion! How could you have known that one day we'd all every last one of us be boarding up our doors and dreaming about probing walls of man hands every night? ... Just me? Watching Repulsion for the umpteenth time what immediately struck me this week, after having lost track of the time indoors myself, was its soundtrack -- the diegetic bird song, distant people playing and chit-chatting through the windows, the incessant clanging of trolley bells that slip in and out of some sort of wailing, panting kazoo cry whenever Carol (Catherine Deneuve) turns her inner heat up...
Oh, Carol.
Never have I felt closer to Carol, watching the cracks with curiosity form across sidewalks and then her walls -- if this movie was in color you know there'd be some yellow wallpaper somewhere -- and ceilings; her angst taking violent shape, rattling her zoo cage. One second she stares intently toward seeming nothingness, the next she paces back and forth like an animal, pent up, prepared to pounce should any person -- make that any man -- come a'callin', shaking bread crumbs and cornmeal in her face.
And yet the men, they keep a'coming. She is a vision, after all -- white shift, a circumference of blonde sunlight encircling her small still features, suppliant as a saint. At least until you get too close. What struck me about Deneuve this time through was the way she plays those moments when her tormentors slash victims do cross that line, sticking their grubby fingers through that invisible shield, the last of her several barriers, demanding she snap back. It's somehow at once automaton and rabid -- she perches Carol on a precipice of indifference and frenzy. It's like the scene in The Stepford Wives where Paula Prentiss post-roboticization goes all in on her teacups. It's just a thing that must be done, this madness. A wind-up and a swing, a wind-up and a swing, all in the name of some silence.
Reader Comments (7)
She is one of the screens most beautiful psychos.
Creepy movie for sure.
That film was definitely scary indeed. Gave me chills man.
An underrated Gem. I wrote an Analyse of 25 Pages for me Prof. About the Film and watch it abot 20 times for that. It was so great.
I didn't really love the movie, I'd say I respected its intent more than enjoyed it, but Catherine Denueve gives an absolutely flawless performance.
I'm not surprised she missed a nomination for it, horror is rarely something the Academy goes towards and that was even more true in the 60's, but she was madly deserving.
Watching this film again recently, I feel like it's screaming for a remake and it'd be timelier than a hundred Invisible Men. Roman Polanski of all people directing this is something I can't get my head around
Without Repulsion, we really couldn't have incredible psychological horror films about isolation like In My Skin or Swallow. This set the template for that subgenre of horror and it still works.
This was also my first Catherine Deneuve film and I instantly became a fan. It would be so easy for this character to become one dimensional and I constantly felt afraid for her, afraid of her, and sympathetic to her crisis.