Possession (1981 film)
Possession (1981 film)
Possession is a 1981 psychological horror drama film directed by Andrzej Żuławski and written by Żuławski and Frederic Tuten. The plot obliquely follows the relationship between an international spy (Sam Neill) and his wife (Isabelle Adjani), who begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking for a divorce.
Themes
Trying to classify Possession, critics drew parallels with Roman Polanski's Repulsion) and David Cronenberg's The Brood. Despite being referred to as a psychological drama, psychological horror, and supernatural horror, the genre of the film is still a matter of controversy. As J. Hoberman notes:
Themes
Made with an international cast in still-divided Berlin, the movie starts as an unusually violent breakup film, takes an extremely yucky turn toward Repulsion-style psychological breakdown, escalates into the avant-garde splatterific body horror of the '70s (Eraserhead or The Brood), and ends in the realm of pulp metaphysics as in I Married a Monster from Outer Space.
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