150 Word Review: 'Possession' (1981)
Ich bin ein Berliner
If you want a movie that will make you squirm from the jump, then you can’t do any better than Polish director Andrzej Żuławski’s psychological horror Possession. The film starts as an uneasy look at a marriage being skinned alive. The characters are pallid, almost undead. The tone is bloodless until it becomes slippery and gory.
Possession is about people tearing each other apart and being torn apart; it’s about jealousy and repression, and it’s set in West Berlin, a nearly empty city divided by walls and Soviet soldiers. It is a loveless place. A young Sam Neil gives a volcanic performance as Mark, an emotionally volatile spy/cuckold who can’t let go of his cheating wife, played by Isabelle Adjani. Neil’s character is revolting—the worst man alive—but Adjani is the star as a woman whose long-repressed desires ooze out of her and grow tentacles in the shadows. Their poor son.