Cinema: Alien Nation

POSSESSION

Directed and Written by

Andrzej Zulawski

In Europe they take their movies seriously. Even—no, especially—the silly ones.

It is not enough for a cineast just to make a horror picture about a young woman who literally gives birth to her nightmares, then copulates with the beast. The film must also be an up-front metaphor for the cosmic anomie of Western civ, and, to boot, a bilious satire on the smugness of the nuclear family.

This French-West German co-production was filmed in English in 1981 by a Polish emigre and stars an Australian (Sam Neill), a German (Heinz Bennent) and a French-German-Algerian-Turk (Isabelle Adjani). Alienation is, not surprisingly, all. Adjani bickers endlessly with Husband Neill, flirts with the mysterious Bennent, and wanders the deserted streets under a sky clouded with portents of apocalypse. One day, in a creepy subterranean walkway, she is seized by violent cramps, writhes about and delivers a glutinous hunk of protoplasm. Ugh!

Even in its horrendously truncated U.S. version (some 40 min. have been cut), Possession is a more engaging movie than it has any right to be. Zulawski’s images are attractively dour: gray and brown, with the only assertive color an occasional shock of blood red. Adjani is a sullen ravisher, gorgeous and half bonkers. Like the movie itself, Adjani has the power of her pretentiousness. —R.C.