The Tenant (1976)
A film by Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski directs and stars in the lead role in this brilliant surreal and nightmarish tale of dark paranoia. Polanski plays Trelkovsky, a shy office worker who moves into an apartment where the previous female occupant committed suicide by jumping from the window of the apartment. Trelkovsky visits the lady in hospital before her death, where he meets a friend of hers, Stella, played by the pulchritudinous Isabelle Adjani (Possession; The Driver). They get along well and decide to go and watch a movie together at the cinema (Enter the Dragon), where they fondle each other. They leave the cinema and go their separate ways.
Trelkovsky starts to annoy his neighbours with the noise he makes in the apartment. His neighbours distrust him and treat him like an outsider. Some question his heritage, but Trelkovsky firmly states to them, "I'm a French citizen!". Slowly, Trelkovsky's paranoia grows and manifests into a state where he starts to think he is the lady who committed suicide in the apartment, and he starts to dress as a woman and applies makeup and a wig.
The finale is a great sequence where we see Trelkovsky's fear in full, with his neighbours all watching him from balconies, like in a theatre, and some of the neighbours appearing like monsters to him.
My favourite Polanski film.
