Catherine Deneuve is mesmerizing as a deeply troubled soul in Roman Polanski’s REPULSION
REPULSION (Roman Polanski, 1965)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
June 13-16
Series runs June 13-19
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
In 1965, Polish-French auteur Roman Polanski followed his Oscar-nominated debut feature, Knife in the Water, with his first English-language film, the psychological masterpiece Repulsion. Catherine Deneuve gives a mesmerizing performance as Carol Ledoux, a deeply troubled, beautiful young woman who shies away from the world, hiding something that has turned her into a frightened childlike creature who barely speaks. A manicurist who lives in London with her sister, Hélène (Yvonne Furneaux), Carol becomes entranced by cracks in the sidewalk, suddenly going nearly catatonic at their sight; in bed at night, she is terrified of the walls, which seem to break apart as she grips tight to the covers. A proper gentleman (John Fraser) is trying to start a relationship with her, but she ignores him or forgets about their meetings, unable to make any genuine connections. Deneuve’s every movement, from the blink of an eye to a wave of her hand, reveals Carol’s submerged inner turmoil and desperation, leading to an ending that is both shocking and not surprising. Shot in a creepy black-and-white by Gilbert Taylor (A Hard Day’s Night, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) and featuring a pulsating score by jazz legend Chico Hamilton, Repulsion is a brilliant journey into the limitations and possibilities of the human mind, with Polanski expertly navigating through a complex terrain. Winner of a pair of awards at the fifteenth Berlin International Film Festival, Repulsion, the first of Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy (followed by 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1976’s The Tenant), is being shown in a 35mm print June 13-16 as part of the IFC Center series “The Fearless Roman Polanski,” which runs June 13-19 and also includes such diverse films by the immensely talented, controversial director as Chinatown, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Knife in the Water, Macbeth, Tess, Cul-De-Sac, Oliver Twist, The Pianist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, and the rarely screened Weekend of a Champion, leading up to the June 20 theatrical release of his latest masterwork, Venus in Fur.
No mere homage to ’80s films, Michael Tully’s sweetly charming Ping Pong Summer was made as if it were a teen bully movie from the decade that gave us such Reagan-era flicks as The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, My Bodyguard, Revenge of the Nerds, and Three O’Clock High. Shot in Super 16mm by cinematographer Wyatt Garfield to give it an authentic period look, Ping Pong Summer is set in Ocean City, Maryland, in 1985, where the Miracle family spends its annual summer vacation. This year they are staying in a ramshackle house by the bay instead of the ocean to save money, but shy, awkward thirteen-year-old supernerd Radford “Rad” Miracle (Marcello Conte) doesn’t really care; all he wants to do is play table tennis and listen to hip-hop. Rad and fellow geek Teduardo “Teddy” Fryy (Myles Massey) hang out at Fun Hub, where kids play air hockey, arcade games like Pac-Man, and Ping-Pong, which, it turns out, Rad is not very good at, his skills about as adept as Teddy’s lame rapping. But after being bullied once too often by obnoxious rich kid and local Ping-Pong god Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) and his sycophantic right-hand man, Dale Lyons (Andy Riddle), Rad challenges Lyle to a match, which he immediately regrets. But with the help of local weirdo Randi Jammer (real-life Ping-Pong enthusiast Susan Sarandon, cofounder of the 
In 1982, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman followed Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal on a five-week tour of Europe as the cutting-edge troupe traveled to Milan, Venice, and Avignon. “I was deeply touched by her lengthy performances that mingle in your head,” Akerman says at the beginning of the resulting documentary, “One Day Pina Asked…,” continuing, “I have the feeling that the images we brought back do not convey this very much and often betray it.” Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Je tu il elle) needn’t have worried; her fifty-seven-minute film, made for the Repères sur la Modern Dance French television series, is filled with memorable moments that more than do justice to Bausch’s unique form of dance theater. From 1973 up to her death in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, Bausch created compelling works that examined the male-female dynamic and the concepts of love and connection with revolutionary stagings that included spoken word, unusual costuming, an unpredictable movement vocabulary, and performers of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Akerman captures the troupe, consisting of twenty-six dancers from thirteen countries, in run-throughs, rehearsals, and live presentations of Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me), Nelken (Carnations), 1980, Kontakthof, and Walzer, often focusing in on individual dancers in extreme close-ups that reveal their relationship with their performance. Although Bausch, forty at the time, is seen only at the beginning and end of the documentary, her creative process is always at center stage. At one point, dancer Lutz Förster tells a story of performing Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in sign language in response to Bausch’s asking the troupe to name something they’re proud of. Förster, who took over as artistic director in April 2013, first performs the song for Akerman, then later is shown performing it in Nelken. (Bausch fans will also recognize such longtime company members as Héléna Pikon, Nazareth Panadero, and Dominique Mercy.)