Repulsion

Polanski’s films were a huge inspiration for me during my early film career. He’s one of the masters who has impacted me the most. I also love his early films like Repulsion, and The Tenant. These films, especially in their use of space to explore psychology, were very influential.

I think for me it’s always Polanski’s Repulsion, and Lynch’s Eraserhead. For me, they are the two perfect movies about characters going mad in their own heads.

Visually, I was trying to mix different styles, from the experimental cinema of Kenneth Anger and Jordan Belson to films like Suspiria for its extreme use of color.

Suspiria in turn shaped 2 films

Keep going forward from Suspiria.

Open Suspiria's Cinema DNA →

I was also thinking of Polanski’s *Repulsion* (65) and how Catherine Deneuve is haunted by the apartment. Those things are not direct influences, but they’re in the air.

I’m obsessed by the psychological horror of Repulsion or The Tenant. Polanski’s movies.

Darren Aronofsky screened Ingmar Bergman's Persona and John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence for Natalie Portman before filming began, these are the films that showed him how to make a psychological breakdown feel bodily. Bergman's Persona is the direct model: an identity that dissolves under pressure, two women who begin to merge. The horror in Black Swan is Bergman horror, no monsters, just the face.