Furn. Apt. to Let

By JAY COCKS

THE TENANT

Directed by ROMAN POLANSKI Screenplay by GERARD BRACH and ROMAN POLANSKI

Like much of Roman Polanski's work, The Tenant is a comedy tipped with poison. As in Rosemary's Baby or Cul de Sac, laughter comes as much from astonishment, even outrage, as it does from humor. Polanski has a carbolic wit and discovers unplumbed depths of amusement in emotional deformity, physical abuse and psychic shock waves. If Chinatown found Polanski in a slightly more mellow mood --owing probably to the keyed-down romanticism of Robert Towne's screenplay--The Tenant shoots him right back to the center ring of his absurdist circus.

Polanski stars as his own protagonist, Trelkovsky, a slight, shy fellow with a personality like a sweaty palm. Looking around Paris for an apartment, he wanders into a building that must have been built in a state of decay. The concierge (Shelley Winters) shows him a flat whose previous occupant, a young woman, attempted suicide by jumping out of a window into the courtyard below. Trelkovsky gets his only glimpse of the girl during a visit to the hospital, where he finds her on a ward bed, wrapped in gauze like a mummy on welfare. She stares at him, at another girl (Isabella Adjam) who is also visiting, then screams, opening her mouth and letting the sound rush out between broken teeth. She dies. Trelkovsky moves into the apartment.

He may be the resident of record, but the apartment--and the spirit of the girl-- take control of Trelkovsky. His life becomes an accumulation of odd incidents: puzzling, nasty little encounters with neighbors, episodes of bizarre mystery inside the apartment. One night he pulls a tooth from a hole in his wall. On another, he sees people standing still, staring at him for hours from the toilet facilities across the courtyard. Paranoia increases, reality slips away. Trelkovsky starts painting his nails, buys a wig wears a dress of his predecessor that he finds hanging in the closet. He suspects a plot and expects violence.

There is never any doubt that Trelkovsky will take over not only the living quarters of the previous tenant but her fate as well. Polanski is not interested in surprise endings: those visitations across the courtyard may be predictable, but they are all the more chilling because of that.

It is hard to determine, as it often is with Polanski, what in the movie is genuinely frightening and what is just cynical. It may be that this, after all, is a separation impossible to make, and that Polanski's distinctive vision is rooted as much in glibness as in genuine darkness. The Tenant, then, would stand as perfect, typical Polanski, a dank joke, a nightmare in jester's dress.

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