GREAT DIRECTORS MEDLY : ROMAN POLANSKI - "LE LOCATAIRE / THE TENANT"

Now, we have been trudging along together for a while now. This is why I assume you know some of my pet hates when it comes to film. And the pettest of my pet hates, as you well know, is the director and the leading actor/actress of a film being one and the same. It seems to me the absolute height of conceit; I also feel it rarely works out. Humans will be humans and once you are the director, the temptation to give yourself a favorable light thus tipping the balance is rather too great. Usually. But of course to every rule there are exceptions. Roman Polanski appears to be one of them. This is not the first film I have seen by mister Polanski; it’s just that I am very sadly behind on my write-ups. I am glad however, that this is the one I start talking about Mr. Polanski in. The first one I watched was impressive – it will make the blog as soon as I catch up with my writing! – but this is… Well… In a word, superb.
Mr. Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski) is a French citizen. He lives in Paris – but this, as you may know, is easier said than done. I am talking on a purely practical level; rents and house prices there were at the time (and still are as a matter of fact) exorbitant to say the very least. But he feels he has finally found a suitable place when he views a little attic room at the top of an old apartment. There is one snag though. The previous tenant has thrown herself out of the window and is now agonizing in hospital. The owner of the flat is understandably reticent to let the flat until she actually passes away. The young woman will pass away by the by, but in the meanwhile Trelkovsky will get to know a bit more about her from her lover, her friends and when she actually passes away her things. However as Trelkovsky settles in to the apartment he appears to be filling the previous tenants shoes in more senses than one… Either he is just being over sensitive… Or there is an actual plot going on, aiming to drive him insane…
The Tenant is, and this is purely my personal opinion, what might be called an “old master”. Now, you know what an old master is as far as pictures are concerned, right? It’s when a painter uses one of his old paintings as a canvass and paints over them. Thus when you x-ray the second painting (or apply another similar method) you are actually able to discover the second picture underneath. Now, on the surface (and ladies and gentlemen, what a surface!) The Tenant is a superb psychological thriller. Polanski establishes the general sense of unease and mystery within ten minutes of the opening. It’s really brilliant, when you think back, there is nothing that has actually happened and yet you are on pins and needles. If nothing else you will be gripping the arms of your seat (unless you have eaten all your fingernails away by this point) until the end.
But underneath all that, I can’t help but feel Mr. Polanski is giving French society a not so gentle poke. Well, maybe not French society in general but the right wing side of it. The people who bung “foreigners”, homosexuals, single parents, the disabled all into one big mass. “The others”. They are expected to act in a certain way, the pressure is turned on from the first minute, pushing the poor object of the negative attention, no matter their strength or character, into a state of abject paranoia and breaking down communication entirely.
The Tenant is the second film of a trilogy – lose trilogy - by Roman Polanski. The third is the famous /infamous “Rosemary’s Baby” and the first is Répulsion starring Catherine Deneuve. The trilogy is that of three films based around flats and houses that makes the tenants… Well… Uneasy… Mr. Polanski, no matter what you think of him as a person, proves in this film that he is not only a master of suspense but also a damn shrewd director… Check out this blog in the coming weeks for my opinions on Répulsion… =)