Roman Polanski’s 1965 psychological thriller explores the depth and progression of sexual paranoia and repression. Carol, played by the incomparable Catherine Deneuve, lives and works in London with her elder sister. Through symbolism (the two girls live next to a nunnery, for example, and the movie is littered with phallic symbols) and Deneuve’s stunning acting, we learn Carol is a fragile, sexually repressed young woman. Carol feels isolated at work and in her own home; she is subjected to tolerate her sister’s boyfriend, whether it is by listening to the couple have sex or by finding his toiletries in her bathroom. Carol’s own suitor disgusts her.

Polanksi offers only a hint of the origin of this deep seeded sexual aversion. The audience receives momentary glimpses of an old family photo featuring Carol as a child detached and distant from her family members. Perhaps this alludes to the fact that Carol experienced sexual abuse as a child, or merely tells the audience she was always a little “off”.

Carol’s paranoia spirals into psychosis when her sister leaves her to vacation in Italy with her boyfriend. Left alone in the house, time becomes irrelevant and Carol shuts herself in the apartment. Her deterioration is fueled by the torturous ticking of a clock, the incessant ringing of the bell at the nunnery, and hallucinations of cracked ceilings and arms reaching out of the walls to ravage her (delightfully reminiscent of the arm candelabras in Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bete). She begins to suffer painfully realistic rape dreams and eventually loses the ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy.  Her psychosis reaches its apex in the two murders Carol commits (I won’t be a spoiler and tell you who she kills). 

The film is calmly atmospheric. There is relatively little dialogue; Deneuve does not often succumb to hysterics, but falls into psychosis quietly. Her vacant eyes and disconcerting silence reveals her demented state best of all. Polanksi’s psychological thriller commands understanding of Carol. By the end of the film, we are trapped inside not only her apartment but in Carol’s catatonic mind. 

 

 

 

 

*screen shots from the film downloaded on itunes

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