The Tenant - Lisa's Review

*SPOILERS*

After last weeks offering of Hour of the Wolf, I really wanted something good to watch and review.  If not good, at least understandable.  After watching this Roman Polanski movie (directed and starred in) I have to say, they have maybe made it a teeny bit more understandable, but not much.

My viewpoints however on this weeks movie and last weeks is pretty much exactly the same. Although it had some dark, creepy imagery in places that made me feel a bit freaked out, on the whole, I found it quite difficult to get to the end of this one.  It was dull to watch (visually and mentally) and I pretty much didn't like anyone in the entire movie.  Kind of a difficult mix.
So I suppose I probably should give you a premise of sorts in case you want to watch this movie.  From reading it does seem to be a pretty iconic movie.  I have no idea why.  Maybe just the name Polanski is enough to make something worth watching?  That confuses me as I think he is incredibly overated as a director.  Ok, so I loved The Pianist and enjoyed The Ninth Gate, but everything he touches (I'd best be careful with my wording here) is most certainly not golden.

We follow shy, unassuming Trelkovsky (played by Polanski) as he rents a room in Paris in which the previous tenant (Simone Choule) tried to commit suicide by throwing herself out of the window.  For reasons best left unexplained he visits Simone in the hospital, where he finds her bound up like a mummy.  He meets a friend of hers there and as Simone becomes aware of their presence, she becomes agitated, screams and promptly dies.  Oh dear.  We don't find out who has freaked her out.

The rest of the movie follows Trelkovskys descent into madness.  He started as a normal guy and ends up as a paranoid schizophrenic, convinced that the world is against him and the other tenants in his apartment block are trying to turn him into Simone and eventually kill him, none of which is true.  Again, it is never explained how this happens.  There are some pretty dark scenes in the movie in terms of madness, one in particular which involves the floor toilet which is located opposite Trelkovskys room.  These aside though, the movie is just boring.  Dull, dull, dull!

The last 5 minutes or so are downright laughable, although that is most certainly not what we are supposed to feel.  The last scene however is just confusing.  Big spoiler coming next.  Skip if you want to see The Tenant.  We end the movie with Trelkovsky in a bed in hospital after having thrown himself out of the same room window as Simone (twice).  He is bandaged up just like she was, but as we view the same scene from behind the bandages of Trelkovsky, we see Simones friend and Trelkovsky himself in the original first meeting.  The movie ends with the same scream we heard from Simone, but this time it is Trelkovsky.  I tried so hard to work out wtf was going on.  Alas to no avail.

It will be no surprise to know I am going to slap an 'avoid' on this ones ass.  Waste of time!