Set in a Paris that doesn't easily spring to mind. A dreary, bleak cold and thoroughly unwelcoming city effectively shot with an emphasis on washed out and faded colours by Roman Polanski.

There is a distinct sense of decay and a sort of rotting dankness that pervades the movie - quite appropriate for the totally depressing experience that this is - not devoid of flashes of the darkest Polanski humour though.

Polanski himself stars as a pathetic loser of a geek who has the misfortune of moving into an apartment where the previous occupant flung herself from her apartment window in a desperate suicide attempt.

He visits the dying ex tenant at the hospital ward where he watches her last gasps and gurgles - a scene which provides a horribly haunting vision not only for Polanski's geek but also for the audience.

Slowly the geek gets drawn into the world inhabited by the previous tenant and gradually his character becomes immersed and indeed dominated by the lingering soul of Simone, the doomed previous tenant. The film plays like a horror film about paranoia gnawing at the sanity of a weak man or then as a vicious black comedy.

It's a downer all the way, but unique and fascinating none the less. A very bleak and weird psychological horror film form a pretty weird director altogether!