It's a curious thing to come across ad copy for a film that seems so completely at odds with the experience of actually watching it. The deliberately feminine cursive adorning Repulsion's one sheet poster describes Catherine Deneuve's Carol as virginal and inexperienced, as if her very obvious fear of men is based in some unconscious desire to remain untouched; her sexuality untapped. Watching director Roman Polanski's film, not only is Carol's reticence around every man she meets entirely understandable - all are aggressive and demanding, attempting to overwhelm Carol with either breathless declarations or physically with their actual bodies - but her heaving disgust is, seemingly, symptomatic of a terrible lived experience rather than maidenly neurosis.
Left alone in a crumbling, Kensington flat by an older sister who has absconded with a married man, Carol almost instantly begins to unravel. Her living space is filled with flies and widening cracks; a lurking, phantom rapist appears at night, clawing at our helpless heroine. Quite unable to take care of herself, Carol's psychological state regresses a step or two back into a choking, sarcophagal childhood. One that Carol isn't, and hasn't ever been, equipped to escape. We are shown brief glimpses of a cracked, family photograph throughout Repulsion. All the frozen subjects stare into the camera, posing for the picture. All except for a child, dressed and arranged very much like Carol is in adulthood, whose eyes bore holes in the back of an older man's head. An older man who, if not exactly the same, is certainly a dead ringer for Carol's violent, spectral intruders.
