Repulsion review

 Number 473 on the top 1000 films of all time is Roman Polanski's 1965 psychological horror film 'Repulsion.'

Carol (Catherine Denueve) is a young Belgian beautician living in London with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) and Helen's husband Michael (Ian Hendry,) whom Carol hates. However, when Helen and Michael go away and leave Carol alone, she quickly spirals into insanity.

Repulsion is considered the first in an informal trilogy depicting the horrors of inner-city living along with other Polanski hits like Rosemary's Baby and Tenant. I'm not entirely sure how Repulsion could kick off such a trilogy especially since it was followed by the infinitely better Rosemary's Baby.

Much of my apathy towards the film stems from the rather tepid character of Carol who was nothing like the energetic Rosemary Woodhouse, played by Mia Farrow. Instead Carol seems to passively drift around her London flat jumping at every shadow. Even in moments where she takes agency like when she beats her sleazy landlord to death didn't seem very believable.

I understand Carol killing her would-be suitor Colin by hitting him from behind. But she kills her much bigger male landlord by slashing him to death with a straight razor. Surely, he would have been strong enough to fight her off. Carol's insipid nature also led to a rather insipid performance from the usually charismatic and empathetic Catherine Deneuve. Very much like Carol, she seemed to be going about the film in a daze.

The limited setting didn't help things either, very much making Repulsion a victim of its own success. Despite Rosemary's Baby having a similar limited apartment setting, it had so much more drama and conflict than Repulsion. Perhaps that was down to Carol being an unreliable narrator due to her declining mental health. Maybe she's hallucinating everything she saw. Maybe not. I don't know either way. And honestly? I didn't care.

And that very much sums up my reaction to Repulsion. I wasn't repulsed. Just apathetic.

Match Point review

 Number 568 on the top 1000 films of all time us Woody Allen's psychological thriller 'Match Point.'

Spoilers ahead

Christ Wilton (Jonathan Rhy Meyers) is an Irish former professional tennis player who marries into an upper-class English family. However, he risks everything when he starts an affair with his brother-in-law's American girlfriend Nola (Scarlett Johansson.)

Let's start with the Jonathan Rhys Meyers-shaped elephant in the room. Chris Wilton is Irish. It's a big part of his character. It's his nickname at one point. Meyers is Irish. Why does Meyers play the character with an English accent? It made no sense.

Anyway...I have seen a few Woody Allen comedies in my time and I have never been a fan. Judging from Match Point, I'm not a fan of his dramas either. He originally conceived this with an American cast and setting, but after failing to get funding, he reimagined it for an British setting and cast. The only exception was Scarlett Johansson who was a last-minute replacement for Kate Winslet.

Match Point divided critics with the Yanks loving it and Brits hating it. Guess what side I fall down on? It doesn't surprise me that American audiences loved this film; it has everything they know and love about British cinema, or think they know and love: good-looking men like Matthew Goode and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, posh English accents, afternoon tea, London landmarks, black taxis and upper-class people doing upper-class things like clay-pigeon shooting. it was like Allen had a list of criteria he needed to hit, I was half-expecting to see Dick Van Dyke singing about cleaning chimneys.

Allen's script was not good. The dialogue was clunky and unnatural with the English characters speaking in American English - Wilson says he was buying a sweater when any other English person would have been buying a jumper. Never mind a silver spoon, it was like the characters were walking around with dictionaries in their mouth. Plus, the plot was rushed. Chris and Nola have an instant-love connection with no catalyst prompting their illicit affair. neither of their parents didn't do anything to deserve being cheated on, not that anybody ever does, but it did make their relationship even more shallow.

Yet this wasn't all down to Allen. Granted the cast wasn't working with the best of scripts, but their performances were not good. Meyers was creepy, Johansson was whiny and annoying - the two of them had no on-screen chemistry at all, and Emily Mortimer, who played Chris' wife Chloe, had all the charisma of a ham sandwich. I understand that she was supposed to be boring, or, at least, too boring to interest Chris, but we saw little evidence of this, before he starts sleeping with Nola.

At two hours and five minutes, this was Allen's longest film, but it could be have been fifteen minutes shorter. The film culminates in the most half-arsed police investigation ever. After Nola falls victim to the surprise pregnancy cliche, Chris is caught in a dilemma to leave Chloe for her or to keep living his double-life. He does neither. He concocts a hair-brained scheme to shoot Nola's neighbour and then her and then stages the scene to look like a drug-fuelled burglary. 

Despite the flaws in his plan, despite how the ghostly apparitions of Nola and her neighbour appearing (the less said about this the better) appear to Chris taunting him about being caught, despite how Chris carelessly drops a piece of incriminating evidence on the script, despite how the police call him in for questioning, despite how everything paints toward him getting caught, he gets away with the crime scot-free.

One of the policemen solves the crime in his dream and is sure that Chris is lying, but is easily persuaded otherwise by his colleague. It's all just ridiculous. it was like Allen was worried he didn't have enough conflict for the final act, so he shoe-horned in this silly police investigation, which he knew wouldn't go anywhere.

Match Point was like every American's wet dream about British culture. But as is often the case, the dream is nothing like the reality. Tennis is a key theme of the film, but Allen served up a complete dud. A while ago, I wrote an article about films that should not be on the top 1000 films of all time. If I were to write another list, Match Point would surely be at the top.