Possession (1981 film)

Mark is a spy who returns home to West Berlin after a mission to discover that his wife, Anna, is seeing another man and wants to separate. Mark turns over their apartment and custody of their young son, Bob, to Anna. After a long drinking spree, Mark returns to find Bob alone and unkempt. He resolves to be Bob's primary caregiver and unsuccessfully pressures Anna to end her extramarital relationship with a phone call. Anna leaves during the night, allegedly to stay with her friend Margie. Mark meets Bob's teacher, Helen, who inexplicably looks identical to Anna except for her hair and green eyes. Mark visits and attacks Anna's lover, Heinrich, who beats him down. Mark returns home to find Anna with Bob, and the couple argues, culminating in Mark repeatedly striking Anna; she then leaves. Mark hires a detective to tail Anna. He later interrogates Anna about their relationship, and she cuts her own neck with an electric knife. Mark treats her wound and cuts his arm with the knife. The detective follows Anna to her derelict apartment and calls to inform Mark of the address. The detective finds a bizarre creature in the bathroom, and Anna kills him. Mark withholds Anna's address from Heinrich. Helen helps Mark care for Bob and reveals that Bob has begun to experience sleep terrors. After putting Bob to bed, Helen and Mark have sex. Anna kills Zimmermann, the detective's work superior and romantic partner, after he finds the tentacled creature and the detective's body in her apartment. Heinrich leaves Mark a film reel that shows Anna hurting one of her ballet students by holding her in a difficult pose to test her willpower; Anna tells Heinrich that their relationship is similar. Further footage shows Anna describing a conflict between Faith and Chance, as well as the pain that her affair will cause to Mark. Anna returns and tells Mark that she is caring for her Faith in her apartment after violently miscarrying it in the subway while he was gone. After Anna leaves, Mark reveals her address to Heinrich. Anna shows Heinrich the creature and dismembered corpses before stabbing him. Heinrich flees and calls Mark to arrange a meeting at a bar. Mark discovers the body parts at Anna's apartment, but Anna and the creature are gone. Mark meets Heinrich, kills him in the bar's toilet, and stages it as an accidental death. He sets Anna's apartment on fire and rides home on Heinrich's motorbike. He discovers that Anna has stolen Zimmerman's car and killed Margie, who saw the creature. Mark and Anna have sex. Anna takes the creature to Margie's place. Mark takes Bob to Helen's apartment, then drives to Margie's place, where he witnesses Anna having sex with the creature. Mark visits Heinrich's mother, who kills herself by overdosing on pills. Mark resists pressure from two former associates to rejoin their mission. He later finds them approaching Margie's place with a police officer. Mark forces a taxi driver to ram the police car as a distraction to allow Anna to escape in Zimmermann's car, though Margie's body is dislodged from the trunk, and Mark is badly wounded in a shootout and motorbike accident while fleeing. He enters a building and climbs its staircase until he collapses. He is found by Anna and the creature, now a fully formed doppelgänger of Mark with green eyes. Mark raises his gun to shoot it, but a hail of bullets from the police below strikes him and Anna down. Mark and Anna share a final kiss before Anna kills herself with his gun, and Mark jumps to his death. The doppelgänger climbs the stairs and mysteriously compels a woman to fire on the police so that he can escape. Helen is babysitting Bob when her doorbell rings. Bob implores her not to open the door, but Helen ignores him. Bob races to the bathroom and drowns himself in the bath. The sounds of sirens, planes, and explosions fill the air outside. The silhouette of Mark's doppelgänger is seen through the frosted glass door as Helen stares straight ahead, her green eyes shining. == Cast ==

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, the genre of the film is still a matter of controversy. As J. Hoberman notes: A number of critics deny the creature with tentacles exists within physical reality: it may be a reflection of Anna's psychosis; the product of Mark's inflamed consciousness, unable to accept his wife's betrayal; Some who have written about Possession have paid attention to the motif of doppelgänger throughout the film. Both spouses die, but they are replaced by doubles, ideal models of husband and wife. Anna "grows" a double of Mark from the creature, an indefatigable lover who is always by her side. The real Mark finds a copy of Anna in the person of the school teacher Helen – she is a gentle character and does not demand anything from Mark, being an "ideal housewife". Two houses in the film – the modern one, which is Mark and Anna's apartment, and the old abandoned house in Kreuzberg, where Anna hides the squid-like creature – are located next to the Wall. The film contains elements of a spy thriller. Mark, an intelligence agent, leaves his job for his family. Anna leaves her family to become an "agent of the dark forces". The confrontation ends with death for both, and in the last frames of the film, there is a direct allusion (the sounds of sirens and the rumble of explosions) to the armed conflict that began in the city divided in two, which could end in a nuclear apocalypse. Scholar Bartłomiej Paszylk writes that the metaphors present in the film also represent "a disintegrating country. The very fact that the film takes place in Cold War-era West Berlin is quite significant for the metaphor of divorce—the wall that separates it from East Berlin being a symbol of disconnection of what was once united—but [Żuławski's] additional intention might have been for the Berlin wall to symbolize the Iron Curtain, and for Germany to symbolize Poland, a country he had to leave in order to keep making movies." == Production ==

Żuławski approached Danièle Thompson and asked if she would work on a film. After receiving a script about 20 pages long, Thompson suggested Frederic Tuten; thus, Żuławski went to New York to meet him. They worked on the script for the film in New York and Paris while Żuławski was in a state of deep depression. In 1976, he divorced actress Małgorzata Braunek. Żuławski recalled how he once returned home late in the evening and found his five-year-old son Xavier alone in the apartment, smeared with jam, after his wife left him alone for several hours – this scene was directly reflected in Possession. A year and a half later, following the authorities' halting of work on the film On the Silver Globe in 1978, the director faced a de facto ban and was forced to leave Poland. While emigrating, he continued to linger on suicidal thoughts, which initially had improved by starting to work on a new film. Żuławski and the film's producer, Marie-Laure Reyre, immediately chose Isabelle Adjani as Anna. By this time, Adjani had already become a celebrity, but the producers had reasons to expect that she would accept the offer. After an unsuccessful attempt to start a career in Hollywood (released in 1978, Walter Hill's The Driver failed at the box office), Adjani decided to return to European cinema. She starred in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), but it had not yet been possible to repeat her success in being nominated for the Academy Award for her role in The Story of Adele H. (1975). However, Adjani's management company turned down the offer, and the filmmakers chose the next candidate Judy Davis, whose work in the film My Brilliant Career (1979) impressed Żuławski. Sam Neill, a less well-known actor who appeared with Davis in the same film, was chosen for the role of Mark. Davis was hesitating over whether to take the role, so Adjani eventually accepted the offer. The role was emotionally exhausting for Adjani. In one of the interviews, she stated that it took her several years to recover from her performance, which J. Hoberman called "a veritable aria of hysteria". It was rumored that she attempted suicide after filming completed, which was confirmed by Żuławski. Time Out magazine compared the behavior of her character to the actions of "a dervish of unrestrained emotion and pure sexual terror". Sam Neill has also commented on the rigours of filming: "I call it the most extreme film I've ever made, in every possible respect, and he asked of us things I wouldn't and couldn't go to now. And I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact." The budget for Possession was $2.4 million, and a 12-week shoot was scheduled. The director chose Berlin as the setting for the story because of its proximity to the Communist world. Principal photography began on 7 July 1980 in West Berlin, and most of the film was shot next to the Wall, in the Kreuzberg section of West Berlin. The "surrealist, clean quality" Żuławski wanted for the film was aided by the Steadicam work of camera operator Andrzej J. Jaroszewicz and Bruno Nuytten's cinematography and lighting. ==Release==

Possession had its worldwide premiere at the 34th Cannes Film Festival, Barbara Baranowska, Żuławski's first wife, created the French theatrical poster. After an initial limited theatre release in the United Kingdom, the film was banned as one of the notorious "video nasties". having lost more than a third of its runtime; the distributor turned Possession into a creature based horror film, almost completely eliminating the psychological horror aspects and main theme of a marriage breakdown. This version was ridiculed by the American press as an example of "a cheap Grand Guignol" and had no public success. Box office Possession had a modest total of 541,120 admissions in France. In the United States, it was released on 28 October 1983 and grossed $1.1 million at the box office. Home media Although the film was banned from distribution in the United Kingdom, it was later released uncut on VHS and DVD in 2000 by Anchor Bay Entertainment. In 2014, Mondo Vision released a region-free Blu-ray of the film featuring the uncut version. This release was available in a standard special edition, as well as a limited edition numbered to 2,000 units. The Australian distributor Umbrella Entertainment released a region-free Blu-ray edition in 2022, followed by a 4K UHD Blu-ray on 25 October 2023. ==Reception==

Critical reception Possession received lukewarm critical response when it was initially released in the summer of 1981. Leonard Maltin wrote of the film: "Adjani 'creates' a monster, to the consternation of husband Neill, lover Bennent—and the viewer", ultimately deeming the film a "confusing drama of murder, horror, intrigue, though it's all attractively directed". Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "At times, the living-color Possession recalls Roman Polanski's black-and-white Repulsion, though only because Miss Adjani is required to slice up as many male victims as Catherine Deneuve did in the earlier, far better film." Variety gave the film a positive review, praising Żuławski's direction, symbolism, and pacing, writing "mass of symbols and unbridled, brilliant directing meld this disparate tale into a film that could get cult following on its many levels of symbolism and exploitation". Harry Haun of the New York Daily News alternately panned the film, awarding it one-and-a-half out of four stars and writing that Adjani's "prize-winning mad-act is impossible to appraise because the film it's in is outlandishly unhinged as well... Just about any dialogue accompanying this mess would seem ludicrous". The Philadelphia Daily Newss Joe Baltake deemed the film a "boringly camp-elegante attempt by a group of reputable French, German and Polish filmmakers" and assessed Adjani's performance as "babbling, incoherent yet arresting". In his review, however, Baltake conceded that the truncated version of the film he had seen—cut by approximately 50 minutes—may have contributed to the film's incoherency. Legacy In the years following its release, Possession accrued a cult following. Dennis Schwartz from ''Ozus' World Movie Reviews'' gave the film a grade of "C+", calling it "[an] uncompromising demented cult oddity". The film is included in Sight & Sounds The Greatest Films of All Time list. Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound commented in 2011, "Although it's easy to see why it was pigeonholed as a horror film, its first half presents what is still one of the most viscerally vivid portraits of a disintegrating relationship yet committed to film, comfortably rivalling Lars von Trier's Antichrist, David Cronenberg's The Brood and Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage." Reviewing the Blu-ray release of the film in 2013, Michael Dodd of Bring The Noise was similarly impressed with what he called "an intense exploration of marital breakdown". He argued that this made Possession "one of the few horror films that successfully builds a back story for its main characters". Reviewing the film's Blu-ray release, Andrew Pollard of the British magazine Starburst rated the film eight out of ten stars, calling it "a visceral, violent, erratic and piercing effort that pokes and prods its audience any chance it gets"; Pollard would also praise the performances of Adjani and Neill, practical effects and unsettling tone. In his review of the 4K restoration, David Fear of Rolling Stone lauded the film as "a body-horror answer to Kramer vs. Kramer" and stated that the restoration was "jaw-droppingly beautiful". On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 45 critic reviews are positive for Possession. Its consensus reads, "Blending genres as effectively as it subverts expectations, Possession uses powerful acting and disquieting imagery to grapple with complex themes." On Metacritic, the film earned a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 10 reviews, signifying "generally favorable reviews". The music video for Massive Attack's "Voodoo in My Blood" (2016) pays homage to the subway scene, with Rosamund Pike wearing a maxi-dress and dancing wildly in a pedestrian underpass. Director Ringan Ledwidge acknowledged the influence, calling himself "a huge fan of" Possession. Awards and nominations ==Remakes==

An Indonesian remake of the film starring Darius Sinathrya was released in May 2024. An American remake is planned with Parker Finn writing, directing, and producing through Bad Feeling along with Robert Pattinson via his Icki Eneo Arlo banner as well as Roy Lee from Vertigo Entertainment, with the film being later picked up by Paramount Pictures. Margaret Qualley and Callum Turner were later cast as Anna and Mark in April 2026. == Notes ==