Necessary
preamble: Roman Polanski is scum, and there is no movie he can direct
that would change that. This movie and Rosemary’s
Baby are both on this
list, and I’m not going to skip these films just because they were
directed by man who would later go on to rape a 14-year-old.
How
does one go about reviewing a movie that’s known mainly for making
frighteningly little sense? The entire point of the film seems to be
that strange things happen, and it’s entirely unclear how much of
it is in the mind of the main character, and how much of it is real.
If the events are real, then all the characters are doing things that
make no sense. If they’re artistic metaphors for his mental
illness, then the Hell if I know what Polanski is trying to say,
other than “paranoia sucks.”
Polanski
plays the main character (although bizarrely, he does not credit
himself as an actor), a young man named Trelkovsky. During an
apartment shortage in Paris, Trelkovsky is able to negotiate an
apartment whose previous tenant, a woman named Simone (Dominique
Poulange), had jumped from the window and is near death. The
apartment complex is populated primarily by paranoids who spy on each
other and regularly file complaints against anyone who makes the
slightest amount of noise. Trelkovsky gradually becomes convinced
that somehow his neighbors are trying to manipulate him into assuming
the identity of Simone. He believes this is supposed to end with him
jumping to his death as well. So he responds to this fear by…
putting on makeup, high heel shoes, a wig, and a dress.
…See
what I meant about this movie making no sense? I literally do not
know how to describe the plot in a way that is more comprehensible on
a literal level than what I just told you.
Early
in the film he goes to visit Simone in the hospital. Possibly out of
empathy, and possibly to reassure himself that she wouldn’t recover
and retake the apartment. He finds himself attracted to her friend,
Stella (Isabelle Adjani), and they begin a relationship, with Stella
under the impression that he was a friend of Simone’s. This serves
primarily to give the film what small amount of grounding it has.
Whenever something insane happens, Trelkovsky can visit Stella, and
gradually open up to her. If nothing else, this allows us to know
what he thinks
is going on. Whether or not it relates to any literal reality is
quite another matter. However, by the end, he is even suspicious of
Stella, leaving us with nothing to grasp onto in our attempts to
understand the film aside from his demented rantings.
Part
of me wants to say this movie is simply about a man struggling with
mental illness, but that isn’t really accurate. It’s clear that
many scenes, such as the neighbors playing football with human heads
or clapping before Trelkovsky jumps from his balcony, are unlikely to
have been what actually happened. At the same time though, there are
some scenes that seem to lend a certain degree of weight to his
beliefs, while still being realistic enough to be taken at face
value. The most obvious of these is the way in which the local café
always serves Trelkovsky exactly what Simone usually had, without him
ordering. And when he tries to order something else, they're
conveniently out.
So,
where does is the line in this film between reality and psychosis? I
have absolutely no idea. It’s a bizarre, creepy, and unsettling
movie. I highly recommend it!
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