This film is part of our Winter Series 'You Want It Darker'.
That sexual desires are endlessly varied is well known, but Polish director Andrzej Żuławski still managed to shock audiences with his film Possession, a story about a woman having an affair with... a tentacled sex monster! Isabelle Adjani delivers a standout performance, teetering on the brink of total hysteria for two hours. Her extraordinary tour de force earned her the Best Actress award at Cannes.
Sam Neill plays a businessman who discovers his wife, played by Adjani, is cheating on him in a way he could never have imagined. The tentacled creature that excites her—a physical manifestation of her desires and frustrations—dwells in an abandoned Berlin apartment. This sets the stage for a slow but deeply painful descent into the rawest emotions and madness of the characters.
Żuławski made Possession following a harrowing divorce, with the note: "Possession is my only autobiographical film." The result is unrestrained, hysterical, and utterly irrational. Żuławski often made films abroad to avoid Polish censorship, but even outside Poland, Possession sparked controversy. In countries like the UK, it was banned for its combination of graphic violence, surrender to carnal desires, and temptation by various evils, pushing boundaries beyond even the most lenient standards.