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Roman Polanski's first English-language film is a spooky, atmospheric psychological thriller that revels in utter ambiguity. The ethereal, breathlessly gorgeous Catherine Deneuve stars as Carol, a Belgian manicurist working and living in the swinging London of the mid-sixties. In the film's first shot, a slow pan-out, Carol is revealed as a catatonic, emotionally distant woman. Her fragile mental state is further compounded by her relationship with her sister Helen, with whom Carol lives with. Carol is both titilated and repulsed by Helen's overtly sexual relationship with her lover, Michael, a married man. Unable to cope with her ambiguity towards sex and her relationship with her sister, Carol begins to lash out in a seemingly innocent but inappropriate fashion, which only begins to hint at her mental instability. When Helen and Michael leave on holiday, much to Carol's despair (a despair at being left alone in an apartment she's grossly uncomfortable in, the apartment being a metaphor for being uncomfortable in her own skin), Carol begins to hallucinate. Ah, but here's where the genius of Repulsion and the undisputable genius of Polanski as a director lie. Is Carol truly hallucinating, or is everything she imagines happening to her really happening (Most disturbingly is the intruder she imagines breaking into the apartment and raping her; was she really raped or did she just imagine it all). Because of her heightened state of paranoia and hallucination, she commits a pair of murders made senseless by the ambiguity of her mental collapse. With no use of special effects whatsoever, Polanski brilliant uses sharp angles and blurred images to bring to life a murky, grim world of psychological terror. We're never quite sure if Carol's really witnessing the walls crack before her eyes, or if that's really a dead rabbit rotting in her living room. Even more kudos goes to the glamourous Deneuve, an actress of unparalled beauty whose aloof, withdrawn nature reveals a troubled psyche ready to explode. Deneuve never settles for hysterics of the melodramatic kind, and provides a stunning insight into the mind of a desperately troubled woman.

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