I wanted to bump her off

ps: this is just rant.

She was that wooden.

its a character study, you just dont happen to like the character. i think the film works perfectly.

I've just watched both The Tenant & Repulsion within a month of each other. I liked them both in different ways, but it seems a bit odd to complain that one has a wooden central character while the other is one of your favorites. Trelkovsky is about as bland and wooden as possible in The Tenant, whereas Carol is deeply disturbed from the start. Both films share similarly glacial pacing but I thought Repulsion was more coherent narratively and in terms of character development. The Tenant was, or course, funnier. But they shared many similar qualities, including the ones you cite as problematic in Repulsion.

Both Repulsion, and The Tenant, along with Rosemary's Baby form a sort of loose thematic trilogy dealing with people in apartment buildings coming undone mentally. I agree that The Tenant is the better film (The Tenant is such a great film) but, I like Repulsion as well, even if it has less substance than some of his other classics.

I agree. Love the other two apartment films.

THE TENANT is also one of my favorites. For one thing, THE TENANT is funny as hell and filled with rich, amusing characters.

I hated every character in this movie, save the women she worked with, who were kind beyond understanding. I get that men were all meant to be awful hideous creatures, and they were.

I'm such a fan of every other Polanski film, still puzzled why I feel such an immediate distaste for this thing.

Whatever the genre, there needs to be at least one likable character. If I'm supposed to relate to Deneuve, she needs to show me a bit of a reason why I should give a sh*t about her. Zombies are boring. She was boring.

This is one of those movies where people do things that people never ever really do. That always bugs me.

(SPOILERS AHEAD!!!)

She'd have been fired long before she attacked a woman, she could've easily told the bf to go away before he broke down the door, she could've slid the envelope with the rent money and the landlord would've left her alone. It doesn't make sense. Even a crazy person with a strong sense of survival would've likely seen that saying SOMETHING, doing ANYTHING, would probably get these men off her back...before they climbed on her back. (Not including the fantasy rapes, of course.)

I mean, is there some misogyny at work here, suggesting that Carol ultimately desires to be violated?

She's a rape victim. I don't think you understand the philosophy behind the film.