A Moebial Ride through Polanski’s Repulsion

Abstract

This article examines Roman Polanski’s film Repulsion from a psychoanalytic perspective by attending Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection. This paper deals primarily with two main focal points. First, it focuses on the film’s portrayal of the protagonist, Carole’s abjection, her problem of non-differentiation, as evidenced by her relation to the maternal body and to corporeality. Secondly, the article investigates how the film positions its viewers with regard to Carole. It questions how Repulsion impels its spectators to engage Carole with a similar non-differentiation by generating a complex web of ambiguities with regard to the differentiation between external/internal, objective/subjective and reality/fantasy.