After REPULSION (1965) and ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), THE TENANT, a USA-French coproduction, rounds out Polanski’s unofficial “Apartment Trilogy”, this time, Polanski takes the leading role as a Polish expatriate in Paris, he is Trelkovsky, a courteous, innocuous gentleman, who moves into an apartment whose previous tenant Simone Choule unaccountably commits suicide.
THE TENANT is a slow-burner, Trelkovsky possesses a kind of modesty that is not very filmic, he has no character (or too generic a character) to engage us (at least in the beginning), Polanski betrays an air of smugness in his measured English diction (perhaps the French version might fare better?), we have to stomach a ravishing Adjani, who plays Stella, Simone’s friend with a chic air of nonchalance, fondling him in a revival house for what purpose? Trelkovksy is anything but a dreamboat, maybe it is Polanski who wants to cop a feel (after his alleged prurient scandal, it is rather hard to watch him without any seamy implications), so the damage is that Stella may be disparaged as a nymphomaniac.
Neighborly rapport is wanting in the building where Trelkovsky dwells, a harpy concierge (Winters), a gorgon Madame Dioz (Van Fleet) and a stern landlord Monsieur Zy (Douglas) are all on the wrong side with him, frequently accusing him of making noise during the wee hours (they’re false because we audience know that one particular night he stays at Stella’s, and another time he is out all night with a male friend of Simone), but Trelkosvsky is never confrontational, not like his uncouth colleague Scope (Fresson), who has a friend at court to fall back on. The only sympathetic one among his neighbors is Madame Gaderian (an imploring Kedrova), but she might have bats in her belfry for all he knows.
The plot meanders into the artery when it dawns on the schizoid Trelkovsky that everyone around him conspires to transform him into another Simone and enact the suicide all over again (he is treated exactly like Simone by the cafe owner, takes the same breakfast and smokes the same cigarette brand and even being kissed by her secret admirer). Yet, succumbed to such terror, a masochistic Trelkovsky inexplicably cross-dresses and wears full make-up like Simone, it is as if he pulls out all the stops to ensure such fate (the evil force is ineluctable), and Polanski’s alchemical techniques finally blooms into high art when reality gives way to fantasticated scenarios, like the inspiringly innovative tricks on perspectives in the night when Trelkovsky is feverish and delusional, the spiraling staircases and eldritch images of people standing catatonic in the opposite window, or the heady shots with camera roving among clapping and cheering audience (are we also complicit in this?) waiting for his final coup de théâtre.
Thematically, among other things, THE TENANT can be intelligibly construed as a metaphor of the persecution foisted upon foreigners in the hands of an ethnocentric France, while the effect is purely Trelkovsky’s paranoia, the cause is acridly ascribed to the hostility collectively emanated from the elder generation. It is an apt gimmick to top off this claustrophobic, prismatic devolving-into-insanity with an uroboric ending, a loud screech warning the unsuspected of the inevitable.
referential entries: Polanski’s REPULSION (1965, 7.6/10), ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968, 7.4/10).English Title: The TenantOriginal Title: Le locataireYear: 1976Country: France, USALanguage: EnglishGenre: Drama, ThrillerDirector: Roman PolanskiScreenwriters: Roman Polanski, Gérard Brachbased on the titular novel by Roland ToporMusic: Philippe SardeCinematography: Sven NykvistEditing: Françoise BonnotCast:Roman PolanskiIsabelle AdjaniMelvyn DouglasShelley WintersLila KedrovaJo Van FleetBernard FressonRomain BouteilleJosiane BalaskoJacques MonodRufusClaude PiépluRaoul GuyladGérard JugnotMichel BlancClaude DauphinLouba GuertchikoffBernard-Pierre DonnadieuEva IonescoRating: 7.8/10