This was my second time watching the film (via the French-language version as opposed to the first, which was dubbed in Italian) and I feel that it improves on subsequent viewings.
A compelling if slowly built-up character study that's beautifully shot and with the Parisian settings being equally impressive. In the long run, it's not top-grade Polanski and I would rank it at number 9 in his filmography but it's still a confident mix of subtle chills and, surprisingly, often broad comedy. It also features a fine cast, all of whom are in good form, but especially Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas and Jo Van Fleet.
Even so, I'm a bit baffled by the sudden compulsion for Trelkovsky to 'change' into the previous tenant; apart from the owner of the café opposite the apartment building, where he is given whatever Simone used to have without asking him if he wished any different, there is little to indicate (as far as I could discern, anyway) that this is what everybody wanted of him! Okay, so he found Simone's belongings still lying in the apartment but what exactly drove him to wear her dresses and make himself up as her (even if he apparently started doing this unconsciously)? Following his nightmarish visions in the bathroom, the last section of the film (where Adjani all but disappears) is almost anti-climactic - especially the scene where the landlord and the other tenants witness his attempted suicide as if it were a night at the Opera, a concept which had already been used 46 years earlier by Jean Cocteau in THE BLOOD OF A POET (1930)!
The ending, then, is at once predictable and unresolved: just what made the two occupants of this particular apartment jump out of the window?!; I remember this factor bugging me on first viewing as well, and I'm sorry to say it's no clearer now! Mind you, the film's first two-thirds are pretty solid but I wish that Polanski had been less reliant on obscure plot points throughout.
A compelling if slowly built-up character study that's beautifully shot and with the Parisian settings being equally impressive. In the long run, it's not top-grade Polanski and I would rank it at number 9 in his filmography but it's still a confident mix of subtle chills and, surprisingly, often broad comedy. It also features a fine cast, all of whom are in good form, but especially Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas and Jo Van Fleet.
Even so, I'm a bit baffled by the sudden compulsion for Trelkovsky to 'change' into the previous tenant; apart from the owner of the café opposite the apartment building, where he is given whatever Simone used to have without asking him if he wished any different, there is little to indicate (as far as I could discern, anyway) that this is what everybody wanted of him! Okay, so he found Simone's belongings still lying in the apartment but what exactly drove him to wear her dresses and make himself up as her (even if he apparently started doing this unconsciously)? Following his nightmarish visions in the bathroom, the last section of the film (where Adjani all but disappears) is almost anti-climactic - especially the scene where the landlord and the other tenants witness his attempted suicide as if it were a night at the Opera, a concept which had already been used 46 years earlier by Jean Cocteau in THE BLOOD OF A POET (1930)!
The ending, then, is at once predictable and unresolved: just what made the two occupants of this particular apartment jump out of the window?!; I remember this factor bugging me on first viewing as well, and I'm sorry to say it's no clearer now! Mind you, the film's first two-thirds are pretty solid but I wish that Polanski had been less reliant on obscure plot points throughout.