"The Tenant" is no piece of whimsey about drag. It is a serious, exact film about the ache of exile. Exile from country. Exile from gender. Exile from the person whom others recognize as the self but whom the self, at times of extreme self-questioning or torment, can find quite foreign. It is a study of a man who, though small, feels he is a nuisance even to furniture. An occasional table, to his way of thinking, deserves courtesy and maneuver. He feels he is even more of an obstruction in the presence of people, and seems apologetic for his short unfurnished tenancy on his life….
"The Tenant" has quite left behind the ethic of cool and the intent to shock which Polanski seemed to hanker after in his last few movies. It goes back to the days of "Knife in the Water" and "Cul-de-Sac." Trelkovsky is very Slav. There is a subtext of powerful humor and longing under every scene of the hero's, however much the film seems superficially to be a horror-thriller. It is a record of the sensibility of a man's tenancy of himself: a man about to be evicted, tinkling the bead curtains for a view of enemy officials, never sure that he is the certified leaseholder of the body he occupies. As in Dostoevski, and in Kafka, imaginary fears are matched uncannily by real forces. Bureaucracy enters with a warrant; the accused person admits to the required crime. "The Tenant" is a poetic nightmare about punishment imposed on an unguilty man who merely entertained great fear of guilt. (p. 62)
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