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Though her symptoms—excessive attachment to her sister, revulsion toward men and the concomitant rejection of “mature” sexuality, hesitancies about food—can all be found in any given textbook on psychopathological disorders, Polanski refuses to argue her condition in a Freudian key. Averse to embracing psychiatric dictates to explain human behavior, Polanski is more an observer than an analyst, and his face slap to the claims of the therapeutic could not be more blunt.

Since there is no past, Repulsion is filmmaking strictly in the present tense, as Polanski’s up-close camera invades the dark, cramped spaces Carol inhabits. She quickly transforms the apartment into a quasi tomb by closing the curtains and battening down the hatches, literally.