Yes, the perspective is cut off at places, but I’m not sure what the difference between “the world around her is crumbling” and “her world is crumbling”. I guess you would agree that all the film’s Freudian shifts are subjective. And I would maintain the same for all of Polanski. It’s the world that “seems” crooked for the protagonists. Rarely does he claim total objectivity, although there are shifts of perspectives (which usually are employed to supply us with the facts of the narrative and themes), a la Veritigo. Remember Chinatown (another one of the many Vertigo spinoffs) where Nicholson goes all the way to assert his subjectivity as the actual truth?

Thanks and Cheers!

Or may be he just wanted to go a step further from Repulsion to boost the chills.

I kinda thought it took away from the film more than I d like to digest

Right from the outset when you discuss the film’s “minimalism” and it’s stylistic connection to Bunuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU (with the zoom out of Carol’s eye)you didn’t strike a false note throughout. The discussion of normalcy/abnormality, the violation of “boundaries,” and the astute notion that “life has a morbid sense of humor” in discussing polanski’s recent arrest and all the events that preceeded it, are superlative. Yes, I quite agree with the indeptedness to Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and REAR WINDOW, and the proposition that Stewart and Carol are “alienated individuals living in an urban setting who look at the world through skewed vision.” And I concur with the comparison ther to Ackerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN. And the discussion of Freud and the ever-evident phalic symbols are persuasively argued.

I saw ANTI-CHRIST two weeks ago (it’s the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen, but still one of the best films of the year)and i would never have thought to have made the character connection here with REPULSION but nicely-posed!

Of so many great passages, I’ll go with this as an example of this review’s perceptiveness:

“Moreover, in this film, this motif of violation manifests itself in social, psychological, sexual and even religious terms. Carol is the symbol of complete purity in the film (Dressed in white, Deneuve is nothing short of a divine angel). She keeps warding off every kind of threat to that purity. A foreigner, now living in a completely alien city, she not only has to adapt to the new conventions, but also has to put up with every kind of oppression that the place may impose on her.”

And the subsequent discussion of sexual orientation.