This oddity from Roman Polanski clearly shows where his preoccupations lay at the time he made it. Polanski himself plays a timid man who rents a Parisian apartment where the previous tenant committed suicide. He becomes obsessed with discovering what led her to it, to the point that he's dressing in drag and reenacting events the way they might have unfolded. The movie's unsettling to a point, and it has that atmosphere of creepy dread that Polanski excels at, but it comes off too much as a rehash of "Rosemary's Baby" and "Repulsion," two other better Polanski films that deal with the eerie goings on in moody apartments.
But as for the preoccupation....unless I'm reading too much into the film, I have to believe that this was Polanksi's reaction to the feelings of persecution he felt at being labeled a sexual pervert and exiled from America. Not making a judgement about him one way or the other myself, but it's hard to deny the evidence of that in the movie itself.
Grade: B+
But as for the preoccupation....unless I'm reading too much into the film, I have to believe that this was Polanksi's reaction to the feelings of persecution he felt at being labeled a sexual pervert and exiled from America. Not making a judgement about him one way or the other myself, but it's hard to deny the evidence of that in the movie itself.
Grade: B+