Word: cul
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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...
...area. In the very heart of the downtown retail area, demolition has begun on the site for a $220 million shopping project like no other in the U.S. Called Lafayette Place, it will include department stores, boutiques and European-style arcades, all arranged along internal streets and cul-de-sacs. The point: to compete directly with suburban shopping malls by creating a distinctive urban shopping environment. In many ways (see box), Boston is still pioneering...
Bark and Catfish Skin. Japanese swords have virtually no parallels in Western art. Only one shape in our cul ture seems to rhyme with the strict parabolas of a tachi's profile: Brancusi's Bird in Flight, with its soaring curvature, immaculate surface and absolute finality of line. The resemblance is not merely formal. Just as the abstract contour of the Bird is rich with allusions to nature, so the blade contains landscapes...
Struggling to recover his balance, Richard Nixon last week stumbled into yet another Watergate morass. Now it was the mystery of the missing tapes. Conceded one of his closest legal advisers: "We've created a credibility cul-de-sac of such monstrous dimensions that even the most innocent transaction appears suspect...
Polanski has always fancied himself something of an absurdist, although his best films-such as Knife in the Water, Repulsion and Cul de Sac-have been more notable for good, slightly kinky melodrama. What? has more of the trappings of absurdist comedy. The girl, although apparently free to leave, remains a prisoner; nothing is explained, no one acts out of any clear motivation...