Tuesday 10 May 2016

Crossdressing Identity Switch : The Tenant

Crossdressing Film : The Tenant (Roman Polanski)

Some of you reading this may at some stage have fantasised about some kind of forced sexchange at the hands of others without your consent. Just imagine you're a vulnerable young man suffering from some form of delusion of reality and you realise that your neighbours in your apartment block are doing just that - changing your sexual identity into that of a female.
Watching the neighbours. Careful they may change your sex.
The Tenant is not technically a transgender film, but it does cover forced crossdressing and the study of a young male who is perhaps suffering from paranoia or schizophrenia. The film is a faithful adaptation on the book by Roland Topor of the same name.
Why are you wearing make-up? Have you
turned into a woman?
Set in an apartment block in Paris Monsieur Trelkovsky (played by director Polanski) moves into a new apartment.  The previous tenant, a young female, had attempted suicide by jumping from a window and is in the local hospital covered from head to toe in bandages from the failed attempt.  M. Trelkovsky acquired the new apartment together with the belongings of the previous tenant, and yes her clothes too.

Crossdressed as the previous tenant,
M. Trelkosky's gender identity is at risk
M. Trelkovsky is very curious about the previous tenant and even visits her in hospital,but she is unable to talk, only scream. M. Trelkovsky meets and becomes in evolved with the previous tenant's friends, whilst at the same time falling out with his new neighbours over the noise he is making late 
at night.

M. Trelkovsky soon assumes the full sexual identity of the
previous female tenant. 
Gradually he starts to assume the identity of the previous female tenant, even though he is not fully aware he is doing this. One day he wakes up to find he is wearing nail polish and lipstick. He is shocked and due to his mental condition starts to believe his neighbours are trying to turn him into the previous female tenant so as he can then enact her suicide again. What follows is a paranoid journey of fear as our character fears for the survival of his own identity. 

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Shelly Winters and Roman Polanski discuss the suicide
attempt by the previous tenant.

I really loved this film, but do accept that this is not a movie for everyone. I even found some of its scenes genuinely frightening.


Come back to your apartment we haven't finished
your sex change


The film can be easily obtained on DVD, although I would welcome a blu ray transfer. Here are a couple of trailers which don't give too much away.



If you enjoy feminisation and forced crossdressing check out our feminisation video site.

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