My friend Adam recently, out of the blue, bought me the DVD of The Tenant. Thanks Adam! I've been re-watching it, and I'm struck again about just how creepy and subtle this movie is.
The first few times I saw it, I just thought of it as a cool psychological horror film. This time, though, I wonder if it's not really about the treatment of immigrants in France (which is notoriously bad). Several times in the movie, the protagonist Trelkovsky is treated with suspicion because he's not French-born, although he is a French citizen. Not only as a tenant, but as a citizen he is obviously expected to not make any noise, and just stay out of sight. Perhaps the way everyone expects him to be like the previous tenant, Simone, is similar to the way everyone expects immigrants to behave like French people, except better.
But I don't want to overanalyze the movie. As for flipping out and imaging people playing soccer with human heads, I can't see any real symbolic significance.
Posted by ahyatt at February 29, 2004 08:39 AM