Review #157: 'Possession' (1981)

Ukrainian director Andrzej Zulawski's first and only English language film, is a strange mixture of horror and drama. The film begins as Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna's (Isabelle Adjani) marriage is deteriorating. What proceeds is a series of increasingly brutal arguments, as Mark unravels Anna's infidelities that she has been embroiled in over the past year. Their son, Bob (Michael Hogben) is caught in between the feuding couple. As Mark breaks down in almost infantile ways to begin with, he employs a detective to follow Anna to find out who she has been having an affair with. Here he meets Heinrich (Heinz Bennent - giving a fantastically deranged performance as "zen" superior; stumbling around in a strangely amusingly contorted way), who has been at least one of the persons Anna has been sleeping with.

The first half of the film sees Mark's paranoia escalate, as he attempts to discover Anna's secrets. Each of their meetings are fraught with anguish and violence. As the secrets unravel, it becomes apparent that Anna has a clandestine apartment, where she has been seemingly having sexual relations with a tentacled "monster". What transpires is a vicious hatred of men, as Anna murders and dismembers men, perhaps to feed the bed-ridden monster.

The ambiguities within the text of the film are great. As the protagonist in the film is male, are we to consider that his instability after the breakup creates these base images of his wives "monster" lover? Has she simply become a monster herself within his broken mind, so that he projects these images of male slaughter onto her? It has been stated by the director that at the time of the creation of the film, he too was going through a marriage break-up. Perhaps these are his fantasised thoughts on the realities of this very real trauma.

Isabelle Adjani gives an incredibly powerful performance, moving from serene, to a very animalistic frenzy of outbursts. She won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for this film. The film also became embroiled in the British video nasties debacle, as it was placed upon the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) list of banned films. A strange inclusion amongst the "hard-core" gore films. The film plays mostly as a dark drama, a fantasised male projection of women's infidelity. It has been compared to celebrated relationship break-down films such as Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973). In it's depiction of body horror, it has been likened to David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979). I wondered, within the moments of horror within Anna's secret apartment, whether Clive Barker may have been influenced by the film to create the fundamental idea of Hellraiser (1987).

Anna's tenticular "lover" may feed upon her victims to create a whole new being. In the finale of the film, she presents the dying Mark with a doppelganger, stating, "It is finished now". We could read this as the total end of the relationship. Or, we could see this as her way (within his own mind) of creating a superior yet visually similar man. A man devastated by the break-up may not be able to deal with the idea of his former wife living with a totally different man, so therefore he wants to create a man that is his mirror image.

A shockingly forgotten film, portrays the destruction of a relationship in all of its debilitating reality. For a period after such an upheaval, nothing really seems real. Perhaps the film has largely been forgotten within the UK because of its inclusion into the video nasties list. A bunch of films that most people would have no interest in viewing. And those interested in the gore-filled nasties, would probably be disappointed with the beauty of the film. It is almost a perfect portrayal of devastation, and the implications, and horrors projected onto the fall-out of long term relationships. Beautiful, disturbing, but essential cinema.


Directed by: Andrzej Zulawski
Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
Country: France/West Germany

Rating: ****

Marc Ivamy

Review #35: 'The Third Part of the Night' (1971)

Remarkably, this was Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's debut feature. Coming from a family full of actors, directors, poets, writers, and general great thinkers, Zulawski strides into this film with confidence, focus and a craft that takes the majority of directors years to perfect. I was interested in this film after reading about the rather strange plotline, and having a keen interest in Polish cinema, notably the work of Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda. And I'm pleased I acted upon my curiosity, as the film is a hypnotic and nightmarish piece of cinema that encourages discussion, interpretation and repeat viewings, something that I find with only a few films, especially straight after the first viewing.

The film begins in a remote countryside house in Nazi-occupied Poland, where Michal (Leszek Teleszynski) stays with his wife and children, until the Nazis come along a murder everyone while Michal lies hidden in the woods. He journeys back to Lwow where he joins the resistance, almost instantly being tracked down and almost murdered. He manages to escape when the pursuers mistake an innocent bystander wearing similar clothes to be him and shoot him dead. Michal comforts the dead man's wife, while noticing that the mysterious woman bears an uncanny resemblance to his own dead wife. Being a typhus sufferer, Michal decides to put his misfortune to use and earns money becoming a lice feeder, strapping small boxes full of the bloodsuckers down his legs to let them feed, which are later used to develop a vaccine.

What stems from the relatively normal opening scene can only be described as a chaotic descent into instability, as the story moves along slowly and confusingly. The decision to use the same actress (Malgorzata Braunek) to play multiple roles is never clearly explained or made clear. The obvious and initial reason would apparently be the inability of Michal to let go of his wife's death, seeing her everywhere, but as the film goes on, you wonder about the mental stability of our hero, or even ponder if this (or indeed the whole film) is just a product of his typhoid-addled brain. Scenes randomly blend into the next, and you have no idea where the film is going or will end up. It is truly a mentally tiring experience, and all the better for it.

Zulawski seems to be fascinated with lice and the feeding process that the film depicts. He films in close detail, with some effectively loose-hand held work, how the lice are packed together in a tiny box, with a mesh screen in place to allow the creatures to feed through. Later, during the vaccination process, we are treated to a microscope POV of the lice being carefully placed on a petri dish one by one, only to be torn open by a pair of tweezers to extract their infected blood. Do the lice represent our protagonist, or the nature of the human race? Or perhaps it's a commentary on the war and the destruction of the Nazi party? No answers are clear with the film, and is best enjoyed as an interpretive piece of art cinema. I use the word 'enjoy' loosely, as when the climax approaches, it almost becomes a piece of psychological horror, one that genuinely disturbs in a way that only a true artist can achieve. It will not appeal to everybody, but no matter what your view or opinion, it will no doubt have a profound effect on the emotions and the brain, and will linger for a long time.


Directed by: Andrzej Zulawski
Starring: Leszek Teleszynski, Malgorzata Braunek, Jan Nowicki
Country: Poland

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie