paid in full To be fair, this movie had potential; hence why I watched half of it before I took a break. You see, the acting is good. But there is a little something missing that could have made this story a little more believable in my opinion. The filmmaker pushed the envelope and either they are far ahead of their time or has too much imagination that need to be checked.

CinemaClown An intricately plotted & skilfully layered study of urban paranoia & mental disintegration, the third & final entry in Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy is a highly ambiguous & utterly mystifying psychological thriller that utilises all the elements prevalent in the previous entries of this unofficial trilogy but may also polarise its viewers due to its drowsy pace & lack of transparency.The Tenant (also known as Le Locataire) tells the story of a quiet, timid & inconspicuous man who moves into a Parisian apartment after its previous occupant commits suicide but soon finds himself being unreasonably reprimanded by his landlord & neighbours and begins suspecting that they are all plotting a scheme to transform him into the last tenant so that he too will follow her fate.Directed by Roman Polanski, The Tenant finds the notable filmmaker carrying the entire film on his shoulders not just from behind the camera but also from the front as he plays the lead character here & delivers a deftly-measured performance. The mental instability of the new tenant is hinted numerous times throughout the story plus his eventual descent into madness is expertly illustrated.Cinematography makes sure that the protagonist is always the focal point of camera, resulting in him being present in every sequence. Almost all the unfolding events are shown from his perspective, which in turn explains the surreal imagery that, just like his mental state, only gets more brooding & disturbing as plot progresses while the pale, colourless Parisian streets exemplify how he views the world around him.Editing is methodically carried out, making sure that the film stays intriguing despite its perplexing structure, but the pace is really sluggish at times, especially in the first half. The story does come full circle over the course of its runtime but still leaves much to ponder about by concluding on an ambiguous note. The supporting cast doesn't have enough material to base their renditions upon but they still do a fine job in their given roles.On an overall scale, The Tenant is competently crafted & masterly composed plus there is a lot to admire about Polanski's attention to details but it is also tedious & overdone, not to mention that its slow-burn narration, enigmatic arrangement & lethargic pace turns it into one of those movies that viewers either embrace tightly or reject outright. Covering all the themes that were addressed in both Repulsion & Rosemary's Baby, in addition to a few more, The Tenant is divisive but it's also stimulating in its own wicked ways. Multiple viewings advised.

sandnair87 'The Tenant' is the final film in Roman Polanski's unofficial trilogy of films about apartment dwellers gradually succumbing to their paranoia. Like Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, it is about the protagonist's own perception of what's being "done to him" and exists only in the darkest recesses of his own mind.It tells the story of the strange series of occupations that take place when Mr. Trelkovsky (a fabulously understated Polanski himself), a filing clerk in a library, moves into a two-room Paris apartment made vacant by the attempted suicide of the previous tenant. Small boned and physically vulnerable, he seems to be aware of having put off people all his life. Thus he goes to great lengths to avoid offending his neighbors.Little by little, Trelkovsky comes to suspect that the other tenants in the building have somehow been responsible for the earlier tenant's suicide attempt. He suffers persecution from apparently everyone in sight. The concierge and his landlord monitor his arrivals and departures. A housewarming party for his bullying colleagues excites complaints about his alleged boisterousness. He nearly lands a gorgeous girl but shrinks away when he suspects she's in on the conspiracy. A mysterious woman appears at his door with her crippled daughter to report that there's a conspiracy afoot to have her kicked out of the building. A busybody turns against him when he refuses to sign a petition to evict the woman but this lone heroic stand means that when the persecuted woman takes a dump on every other tenant's doormat, he has to scoop up some excrement and put it outside his own flat so he won't be blamed. But he answers all the unaccountable rudeness with infinite patience. One morning when he wakes up in full drag, missing the tooth that the dead girl was missing, he is finally convinced that his tenants are engaged in a conspiracy to drive him to suicide by forcing him to take on the personality of the dead woman. All this leads to a scandalous double climax that is still among the most despairing in cinema.'The Tenant' works so well is because it isn't so much a psychological portrait of grief as it is an unnerving acknowledgement of the ambiguous nature of the world. It displays Polanski's clear-eyed narrative discipline, with a creepiness that seeps right into your bones and never lets up. His nightmare vision of the apartment building as an almost living and completely malevolent entity remains unmatched by anyone in its astonishing hallucinatory horrors. Via seemingly simple albeit absurd exchanges, with flashes of black humor, he brilliantly evokes an evil society's almost supernatural ability to recognize weakness in others and to punish all that is good.The Tenant is a chilling exercise in urban paranoia and mental disintegration that overwhelmingly solipsistic and ultimately alienating.

Jugu Abraham I agree with Roger Ebert's comment totally on Roman Polanski's "The Tenant"/ "Le locataire" (1976) on re-viewing it a second time after a gap of 30 plus years: "It is not merely bad, it is an embarrassment."The film was predictable from the start. All the actors were good but wasted, especially Isabelle Adjani--with one memorable exception Rufus. His body language was a delight to observe closely. The Egyptological motifs on the restroom wall were a hoot. even if some users might have stared at it once or twice. And imagineafter falling off 5 floors in a botched suicide attempt, bleeding and hurt, clambering up 5 flights of stairs within minutes to repeat the feat!!