Possession

1981 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A man tries to put his marriage back together but can't because his wife is sleeping with an octopus.

Going in, I knew this movie was going to be strange, but I thought it was just going to be because of the octopus sex scene. The first half of the movie, aside from some very strange overacting by everybody involved and especially Sam Neill, is a fairly normal domestic drama. It's a domestic drama turned up to 11 or 12, but it's still pedestrian enough. Once that octopus comes in and the characters start sawing at themselves with a meat cutter, things get very strange and never let up.

Director Andrzej Zulawski was going through his own divorce as he made this, and you can't help but wonder how much of this is intensely personal. At the same time, I wondered if this was actually a dark comedy. A fight scene filled with snarling and slapping and ending with the wife stepping in front of a truck and the husband randomly deciding to play soccer with some children? The worst private detective in the world? That scene with the meat saw? Ballet moves during a fight scene between Neill and his romantic rival? The weird performances? There's so much silliness even though the tone isn't comedic at all. The camera looms, always lurking around these characters, never quite sitting still. There's a haunting quality to the cinematography that makes it almost impossible for this to be a comedy, but I'm still going to think it was anyway.

Ok, it's not a comedy.

I started off wondering what the hell Sam Neill was doing, but gradually, the other performers caught up with him. leading me to believe that the performers were intentionally acting this way. Every line is strained, every gesture is exaggerated, and every interaction feels like it's going to end in violence. A lot of them do, the characters frequently leaving scenes with blood on them. Neill's consistent here, and I ended up really liking his performance. Even stranger was Heinz Bennent as his rival, always twirling and gesticulating like no actual person ever would. It's incoherent gesticulation. But it's Isabelle Adjani's performances here that absolutely floored me. She plays the wife as well as the couple's son's teacher, and it's as the wife that she just dazzles. The movie's title would lead one to believe this is about demonic possession or something, and although it's not quite that, you wouldn't know that if you watched Adjani's performance with the sound off. She writhes and screams like she's trying to force demons from her body through every orifice she's got, and it's an amazing performance. There's a scene with just her that takes place in a subway, and holy hell, it's the kind of thing that is just going to stay with me. It's just so great!

I have to go do something else right now. (Note: Not sex with an octopus man.)