I know that there are droves of Rocky Horror
Picture Show devotees out there, but while that cult classic has a
place in my heart, for my money there is no movie musical more batshit crazy
than the 1980 Cannon Films joint The Apple. Thank you,
Menahem Golan, you magnificent, lunatic bastard. It easily ranks in my top ten
films of all time, no question.
While it doesn’t ever quite reach up to those manic highs, if
you’re in the mood for a dark, Polish, new wave mermaid rock opera, you may
well want to check out The Lure at the Seattle International Film Festival. Agnieszka Smoczynska’s film certainly fits that description, and
it will squeeze your brain until you’re on the verge of passing out. Which can
be fun.
The synth-driven house band at a 1980s Warsaw nightclub gets
and unexpected boost when, on what appears to be a group camping trip, they
encounter a pair of mermaid sisters, Golden and Silver, who just so happen to
be excellent singers. If there’s one thing I learned from The Little
Mermaid, it’s that all mermaids are swell vocalists, so if you need
someone to front a musical act, you can do worse than looking to the sea.
From there the plot unfurls like your typical music industry
picture—there are sleazy promoters, newfound notoriety, internal jealousies,
complicated romances, and all the usual tics. The newcomers take over the
spotlight, there’s some infighting, but while all of this is fairly standard,
no one really bats an eye at the fact that there are two half-fish women on
stage. Granted, they only have scales when they’re wet, but there’s still a
crowd surfing mermaid scene. And they do occasionally kill people, so you might
think someone would raise their hand and ask what’s up.
Weird-as-shit Euro-pop musical numbers; a freaky,
hyper-stylized color scheme; excessive amounts of teen nudity (you may very
well feel feel like a dirty old pervert as the awkwardly young Gold and Silver
spend most of film naked, or at least topless, and there are some skin crawling
moments with unusual orifices) combine to create a strange, uneasy atmosphere.
More than once I rubbed my eyes and pondered what the hell I was watching. It’s
in the unsettling tone and grotesque burlesque feel where The
Lure shines brightest.
The Lure isn’t a great movie. Full of
uneven pacing, random scenes that don’t connect to anything larger, and a
woeful dearth of character development in all but a few cases, it’s never
particularly engaging on an emotional level. But Smoczynska creates an unusual
dreamy sensation and drops the viewer right in the middle to take it all in.
From a purely spectacle angle, The Lure is a strange,
atypical film, and if you’re into crazy-ass shit—which is right up my alley—you
may want to take a look at this one if you have the chance. You certainly
haven’t encountered its ilk before. [Grade: C+]
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