Le locataire

"Le locataire" (The Tenant) is perhaps not one of the best known films of Roman Polanski, but definitely a very interesting one. Made in 1976 as the final piece of his "Apartment trilogy", the film was based on the novel of artist Roland Topor, whom I mentioned already in an earlier post in relation to his visual art. The story is a psychological exploration of the effects of an oppressive environment on individuality, and the resulting suspicion and tension that eventually grow into dramatic proportions. Individual sensitivity pursued into a frantic denial of total submission to the common. Polanski plays the new tenant who is moving in to a flat previous owner of which tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the window. The flat seems nice, but then things start going wrong. It begins with neighbours complaining about his habits, after which he tries to adapt as much as he can, but gradually becomes paranoid about his neighbours trying to turn him into a substitute of the previous tenant. All this seems to be substantiated by some bizarre discoveries he makes about the household. We don't get to know in every detail how much of this is fantasy and how much is not, but the tension thus caused leads to a dramatic climax... twice in fact...