For fans of Black Swan : Check out the real thing, Polanski's Repulsion

For fans of Black Swan, I suggest you check out the source, the ur-Black Swan, and watch Roman Polanski's "Repulsion." For others, go there if you dare - for it's truly a repulsive film and also a great film, in its way - you have to have the stomach for it. Much like Black Swan, it's the story of a beautiful very young and very vulnerable woman (Carol, Catherine Deneuve) who is - we gradually understand - seriously delusional and repulsed by sexuality. In Repulsion, she's living with her older and domineering sister (similar role to the mother in Black Swan) and working in a salon, where she's bossed around by everyone. She's French, living in London, so always a bit alienated; we learn almost nothing about her family except that she seems troubled by a family portrait with her as a young woman. The film strongly suggests that she has been the victim of rape or abuse (or both), but whether by a family member or a stranger - or whether it happened at all - is left undetermined. What we do see for certain is that she pushes away from the attentions of any man and, as it becomes increasingly impossible for her to work (and her sister is traveling with her boyfriend), she stays at home and lets her apartment fester in squalor - and increasingly suffers from weird delusions: cracking walls, hands reaching our for her. Many images of repulsion, including notably a skinned rabbit left on a plate to rot. Ultimately (spoiler here) Deneuve kills at least one man (probably two - some ambiguity on that) - not a happy ending, but a great and memorable depiction of a woman in desperate need of help, a victim. Of course this portrait is all the more haunting when we think inevitably of how it was a foreshadowing of the tragedy in Polanski's life.