Few movies make an entertaining and intriguing representation of characters with psychological issues. The Tenant isn't the greatest movie that accomplishes this, but it does provide a fun yet kind of overextended experience for the viewers.
The story is about a regular looking guy played by Roman Polanski, who is both the director and the main actor in this movie. This guy is looking for an apartment to rent and the one he finds happens to be previously rented by a woman who tried to kill herself by jumping through the window. The first strange thing we will notice is that when he is told this tragic fact the first time he visits the apartment, the woman who is telling this laughs while doing it. A normal person wouldn't laugh while talking about the suicide attempt from the previous tenant right?
He is able to rent the apartment after negotiating with the owner, and everything looks good to him. A curious fact about this apartment and one that probably was more common in the 70s is that there wasn't a toilet inside the apartment. The toilet was outside of it and it was shared with other tenants. That surely looks uncomfortable but I don't have a clue if this was common in apartment buildings in France in the 70s. To make this a little bit more uncomfortable, from the main window of his apartment he can directly see the toilet's room window and the person who is inside.
The main character is a total gentleman so one of the first things he does after renting the apartment is to go and visit the previous tenant in the hospital. She is unable to speak and her whole body is covered in bandaids, so it is impossible to see her face.
In the first half of the film, the only extremely weird thing that happens is that he starts to see some of his neighbors entering the toilet room and standing still like statues without doing anything. They aren't in the toilet but rather standing in the middle of the room facing the window. That's not normal and what's even more worrying, it is not just 1 neighbor who does this, it is several of them but never at the same time.
From the beginning, he had some issues with the other people living in the building, things like noise claims and general hostility. These people were never friendly but things do appear to escalate. The film gets weirder and weirder, especially in the second half and once we have reached the final 30 minutes it gets even crazier. I have to say that once a particularly strange behavior from the main character was revealed, I was able to see a big twist coming and it was confirmed at the very end of the film. The only explanation that I could think about this film is that we are seeing everything from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, which basically means that everything we are seeing may or may not be true.
This isn't a crime movie, and I thought it was a mystery but ultimately decided it wasn't a mystery neither. It is a psychological thriller from the POV of an unstable person. At least that's my take on it. If you like this type of film this one is worth seeing.
The best
- Very original plot, especially taking into account this is from the 70s.
- Implicitly it makes the viewers feel the confusion and even terror that people with psychological problems have to face.
The worst
- The strangeness of this film might put off some people.
- The movie lasts 2 hours and this felt like too much.
More information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074811/
Review: AAA
In numbers: 7/10
Wow, I was almost enjoying the movie plot. You should write one more post about it and that should save me from watching the movie....lol...
I will try to watch this movie the next week. You have build up excitement for me.
Thanks for suggesting a good movie.