POLANSKI’S THE TENANT: WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBOURS SAY?

THE TENANT directed by Roman Polanski (USA, 1976)

Psycho Tootsie – Polanski cross dressing.

“At what precise moment does an individual stop being who he thinks he is?”  This is the key existential question at the heart of a movie about one man’s descent into cross-dressing and insanity.

Like all the best mindfuck movies, The Tenant gets inside your head to the point that you are unsure where real fears end and paranoid illusions take over.

Set in Paris,  Polanski stars as the scrupulously polite Trelkovsky, a Polish man who gives every appearance of being an upstanding, serious-minded French citizen.

Strange things happen when he moves in to the apartment of Simone Choule, a young woman who has inexplicably attempted suicide and is not expected to live.