|
"Damn hard to find an apartment nowadays," madness is part of the killer deal. Monsieur Trelkovsky in Paris might be Kafka's little file clerk, everybody from snapping lapdogs to grabby beggars have the better of him, Roman Polanski clinches the comedy of discomfort by casting himself at its clammy center. The apartment's previous occupant jumped out the window, the shattered hole in the glass roof below is rhymed with her gaping mouth as a bandaged wreck. Bullfrog concierge (Shelley Winters), desiccated landlord (Melvyn Douglas), fork-tongued gossip (Jo Van Fleet), a cabal of gargoyles in the timorous outsider's mind, or is it? His boorish pal (Bernard Fresson) shows how it's done, blast the music and screw the neighbors, for the gawky date (Isabelle Adjani) a Last Tango in Paris lampoon. "At what precise moment does an individual stop being who he thinks he is?" Rather than the clinical detachment of Repulsion, a tangled immersion for Polanski's magnum opus of wicked paranoia, all of his work passes through it from Knife in the Water to The Pianist. More than a state of mind, the residence with the walls closing in is the protagonist's very body, the sight of it ransacked is a foul violation. Scratching furniture, groaning pipes, the tooth behind the wardrobe. From Gauloises to Marlboros, a fable of possession. "I mind my own business," not enough, the void is within. A certain Egyptian strain, hieroglyphs in the lavatory to go with the wailing mummy in the hospital, Gautier's roman amid the victim's belongings. Fellini's bouncing decapitation (Toby Dammit), a gray Eiffel Tower, Cul-de-Sac's cross-dressing dilated, it all sets up the uproarious plunge. "Drinks for everyone. Everyone but him." The punchline helps itself to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kubrick takes it from there with The Shining. Cinematography by Sven Nykvist. With Lila Kedrova, Claude Dauphin, Claude Pieplu, Rufus, and Romain Bouteille.
--- Fernando F. Croce |