Back in a still-divided, seemingly empty Berlin, high-level wheeler dealer returns to a marriage so suddenly rocky that he offers to go to a hotel. The choice of Berlin is not accidental, for the film's three main characters (Anna, her husband and her lover) are also split, having lookalikes. But though she claims not to have been unfaithful, there's that soulful postcard from another man - and then it begins: the furniture-smashing restaurant argument, the extended binge, the confrontation with deceptively laid-back Heinz Bennent, the matched kitchen knife cuttings, the meetings in the creepily empty and desolate secret apartment, the blood-spattered murders, the crash into the police car, the sex with the doppelgänger... and then there's that Thing, courtesy of special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi.
Fantasized from Żuławski's own messy divorce, the film can claim to be an underground cult horror banned under the 1984 'Video Nasties' Act as well as being a prize winner at both the Cannes Film Festival and the César Awards. Possession (1981) is a Bergmanesque marriage duel escalated into the violent, the surreal and the bizarre, featuring incredibly intense performances from starring Sam Neill and Cannes and César Best Actress-awarded Isabelle Adjani.
Begins at a head-banging pitch and builds to a state of genuine derangement.
- David Edelstein, The New York Times.
Film Forum began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films. It presents two distinct, complementary film programmes - NYC theatrical premieres of American independents and foreign art films, programmed by Cooper and Mike Maggiore; and, since 1987, repertory selections including foreign and American classics, genre works, festivals and directors' retrospectives, programmed by Bruce Goldstein. As a cinema of ideas, Film Forum is committed to presenting an international array of films that treat diverse social, political, historical and cultural realities.
Andrzej Żuławski, a Polish film director born 22 November 1940 in Lvov (now Ukraine), has often gone against mainstream commercialism in his films, and has enjoyed success mostly with European art-house audiences. Since 1981 he has been making films mainly in France.
Possession is playing at the Film Forum from the 2nd-8th of December 2011.
For more information and showtimes see: www.filmforum.org
Possession (1981), directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 123min, color. A Bleeding Light Film Group Release.
Film Forum
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Source: Polish Cultural Institute in New York