The Tenant
★★★★★
Dir: Roman Polanski
(1976)
Whether you see Roman Polanski as a dirty old man or as a masterpiece making auteur, watching him going mad, dressing in full drag and cooing “I’m pregnant!” towards the camera probably isn’t going to change your mind either way. Its terrifying and hilarious no matter which side of the fence you sit. The Tenant, the last film in a loose trilogy dealing with urban loneliness at its most horrific, is far funnier and darker in atmosphere in many ways than both Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion.
It deals with Trelovsky (Polanski) who snaps up an apartment in Paris while it’s previous resident is still in a coma after jumping from the window. Trelovsky’s paranoia is pushed into the red as he becomes more and more convinced that the uptight neighbours are trying to give him a hand in ending up the same way. Trelovsky meets Stella (The gorgeously geeky Isabel Adjani) at the barely breathing ex tenants bedside and Polanski takes us deep into what it is he does best. Rolling along brilliantly from farce to fear with Polanski and Swedish wonder man Sven Nykvist creating an mis-en-scene that often veers violently between horror and parody makes sure The Tenant’s impact has not diminished since its release 30 years ago.
Polanski’s performance is fantastically over the top and as he unravels over the course of the film a truly scary picture is painted of, not only a potentially crazy man, but also a sad and lonely one. His rat like features combined with his little squeaks and snarls in the final reel are totally priceless. In one of the films best moments before Trelovsky really loses the plot, he lies drunk on Stella’s bed and ask’s; “If you cut off my head, what would I say… ‘Me and my head’, or ‘me and my body?’… What right has my head to call itself me?”. And in asking where his own self lies he also asks us in turn to try and separate just what makes us what we are, to split with him.
Dark, unsettling and very funny, its no surprise then that The Tenant’s influence can be seen clearly in the works of Lynch and De Palma and all those other identity seekers. A true original, watch it very alone if you haven’t already.
