Repulsion

Bomb Rating: 

This chick has issues, man.

You learn at the end of this film that Carol Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve)has been carrying around some serious baggage her entire life, yet director Roman Polanski wants me to believe that not one person in her life has ever realized that she's not well. Her live-in sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), is the most clueless, since she apparently believes that her sister's preferred activities -- such as waking up in the middle of the night screaming, or freaking out at the sight of Helen's boyfriend (Ian Hendry) shaving -- are perfectly normal.

This is not the type of woman who should be left alone, so naturally Helen and her boyfriend, Michael, leave her alone. They go off on vacation. This prompts Carol to swirl into the pit of insanity as she dreams of a man raping her and of the walls of her sister's apartment cracking apart like her fragile grasp on reality. She leaves potatoes out to grow roots. She leaves a rabbit's carcass to rot. The apartment looks like the aftermath of a Tailhook convention.

What's stunning is that the psycho actually has some guy interested in her. He tries to kiss her early on in the film, and she reacts as though he's spit bleach into her eyes. Tip from John Gray: This is a "bad" sign. If this is all a metaphor for male-female relationships and women are the flipped-out nut cases, then the men are clearly the bumbling morons who just don't know when to quit.

This chick has issues, man, yet the guy still tracks her down while looking for love, when he'd be a lot better off slamming his penis under the lid of his icebox. When he gets to her pad, the rabbit has been rotting for days, yet he dismisses it as a "woman thing." I realize that most guys are probably clueless when it comes to women, but let me gently suggest that when a woman leaves a rabbit carcass rotting in her living room, it's good sign she just wants to be friends.

To spread the word about this Repulsion review on Twitter.