*Sigh* Why Are The Beautiful Ones Always Crazy? Roman Polanski's REPULSION

Wow. When Catherine Deneuve graces a film with her almost supernatural beauty all one can do is stare, and wonder what it must be like to either be her, know her, or (the cold shower is running as I type this), have loved her. The impossibly beautiful, and eternally glamorous Deneuve has been in the game for over four decades now. She has worked with some of the greatest directors ever - Demy, Bunuel, Truffaut, Von Trier (yeah, I said it, Lars is the bomb) - and in REPULSION, a young Roman Polanski.

REPULSION is about a shy, virginal teenage French girl (Deneuve) living in swinging London during the 60s with her sister. She works at a day-spa, assisting in manicures, facials, etc, while her flat personal life consists of warding off the advances of a persistent bloke who gets increasingly frustrated with the shyness that accompanies her ravishing beauty. And to make matters worse as far as ratcheting up the sexual tension, she is kept awake by her sister's noisy lovemaking with her married boyfriend in the next room. All of this comes to a bat-shit crazy head when her sister leaves her alone in the apartment for a weekend jaunt to Rome with her illicit lover. And by "bat-shit crazy" I mean Cathy D. goes completely nuts.

REPULSION is the stylistic blueprint for ROSEMARY'S BABY in the sense that Polanski uses the closed quarters of the apartment to suffocate his central character as she loses her mind. Cracks and tears appear suddenly in the walls, amplifying the disintegration of her sanity, and disgust and fear of sexual contact. All of these things build, and build until the film's nightmarish mindfuck of an ending. Oh, and did I mention the rotting skinned rabbit on a plate, or the rapist that may, or may not be just in her mind? I didn't? Well, you'll just have to see the movie.

Cathy D., as I mentioned before is hotter than Texas asphalt in August, and one fucked-up chick which makes her very scary to me as a single male. This is not a woman you want to get mixed up with. Muchas problemas. I'm sure this film is doubly scary to women, as it is essentially a young woman's descent into madness brought upon by her fear of sexual penetration at odds with the shame of actually wanting it. REPULSION has such strong feminist overtones that it feels as if it could've been made by Jane Campion, but instead was crafted by a guy currently in exile, avoiding conviction for a 30 year-old stat rape case. Go figure.

We're living in a period where horror is anything but subtle, and the psychology of the characters take a backseat to the excesses of gore and suffering. I'm not about to get into a "torture porn" ethics/morality or lack thereof debate, because we here at the Wreck love some fairly sick shit (some of us more than others). We're not going to give Eli Roth any press because a) we haven't seen either of the HOSTEL films, and b) we hated CABIN FEVER and are still trying to figure out what the big deal is with this guy. My point being after a needless digression that a film like REPULSION is ten times more effective than most of the shock-horror being released today. It's easy to shock, or gross-out an audience, but it's damn fucking hard to create a character that you truly feel for, then deliver genuine scares through events that keep you up at night, thinking about what it was that you just witnessed.