synopsis:

much of 'repulsion' movie is wordless. The young Catherine Deneuve plays carol, a Belgian girl stranded in '60s London, a shy beauty with no social skills. she lives in an apartment with her sister Helen and works at a beauty salon. carol is sexually repressed; she is a very shy girl who doesn't feel the least bit comfortable with the idea of romantic relationships. but Repression ain't the half of it - she looks very depressed over something, and probably needs fairly intense observation just to make sure she doesn't commit suicide.the universe conspires to penetrate that repression - complete strangers gawk at her, hit on her, ask her out, while she bashfully slinks away. She strains in her bed to block out the sound of her sister's lovemaking in the next room. Even the camera won't let her be her, constantly intruding on activities she wouldn't dare let any man have a good look at (undressing, for example, or one scene where she washes her feet in a particularly leg-exposing position).

When Helen goes off on an italian holiday with her boyfriend, Carol is left to look after the apartment by herself, something she's not really psychologically equipped for. Extremely paranoid, Carol refuses to let anyone in and never leaves the building herself, in effect breaking off all contact with the outside world. In this claustrophobic environment, she begins to lose her grip on reality, suffering from hallucinations of being attacked by a phantom rapist and hands reaching out from the walls to grab her. When she hears creaks and footsteps, they don't just fade off into other bumps in the night - they spiral upwards into full-blown hallucinations as her fears of rape and her own sexuality take on a life of their own. she gradually, quietly, completely goes mad.

When her would-be boyfriend goes into a rage that she wouldn't see him or answer the phone when he calls, he breaks into her apartment and Carol responds to his sexual advances by fatally bopping him over the head and dumping his body in the bathtub. The landlord comes by for the late rent owed him and then calls the flat a pig sty, observing a deteriorating cooked rabbit carcass still uneaten on her dinner plate which is attracting flies. Nevertheless he finds himself attracted to her and tells her if you look after me, you can forget the rent. She will also brutally murder him when he makes a sexual advance towards her.

about this movie:

'Repulsion', starring Catherine Deneuve, Yvonne Furneaux and Ian Hendry, was polish director roman polanski's first film in English.this movie, which is generally seen as one of the first horror movies, can be interpreted in many ways. it surely addresses the way a girl can be frightened and sucked up in loneliness when confronted by sexual desires of men and of herself.