Hot off the 2016 festival circuit and touting various awards and nominations, The Lure is a wonderful musical feature from Poland. Having missed it at Fantastic Fest last year, I was super excited to have a chance to screen it digitally for a review as it kicks off its theatrical release in New York.
As a magical re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, The Lure gives the story an interesting adult flavor that Disney wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. The story begins with two mermaid sisters encountering a musical troop of sorts, who perform at a local club presumable in Warsaw. Now to be fair, the subtitles in the screener I watched were very basic, and only covered straight forward dialogue and song lyrics. I sensed that a bit of detail was lost in translation, but that’s quite normal for press screeners. We often screen versions of films that aren’t 100% polished for theatrical distribution, so sometimes with foreign films, the subtitles lack more refined translation. This, though, is an assumption and I do hope that the subtitles are more descriptive and explanatory for the national release. I could tell that that a lot of helpful information was missing. Even if this was the case, the film is solid.
Now back to the story. Our two mermaid sisters, Golden, played by Michalina Olszanska, and Silver, by Marta Mazurek, join the musical team after their original intent to eat two of the musicians, is thwarted. They become an instant success with their fishy and fetishistic sister-act. We learn quickly that Golden, the witchy brunette, is the more dangerous creature, keeping her predatory nature alive and nourished, despite their temporary sojourn with humanity. She stays grounded in her mermaid ways, and in this story, mermaids are clever and carnivorous predators, with humans a favorite meal. Golden reminds her sister that they are here only temporarily, so that they can continue their swim to their final destination, America. Silver, is the “Ariel” of the story. She’s gentle, curious, and sweet, falling in love with Mietek, the bassist of their show. Unfortunately for her, Mietek is not into her fishiness and Silver must makes some difficult choices for a chance to be with her true love.
Stealing every scene is the beautiful Michalina, as the sultry Golden, and she is just magic to see on the screen. Her struggle to keep her sister grounded in their true nature is painful and even though they are murderous sirens, you sympathize with her plight. She isn’t emotionally connected to the humans, and so she wanders off on occasion to hunt up some dinner and along the way befriends a punk-rock sea witch. His character is amazing and he warns Golden about the dangers of Silver falling for a human. Another top performance in the film is Kinga Preis, who plays an aging songbird for the musical group. She is a twisted example of a maternal figure and boasts a broken psyche of epic proportions. Her character is disturbingly fascinating and Kinga brings a lot of charisma to the difficult and complex role.
Esthetically, the film is gorgeous and wild. It has a sort of frenzied Lynchian quality to it, being the perfect mixture of glitter and the grotesque. The mermaid body design is inspired and Celtic, and the creature effects and make up work are outstanding. I was surprised at the amount of gore in the film and how these scenes were some of the more memorable in the film. Even they are shot with an artistic eye and I loved the surgery scene.
The music was good and the styles varied from haunting folk songs to heavy metal. The singers aren’t belting out songs with perfect vibrato and theatrical resonance, they sound more natural. I assume that this is a cultural difference from our American musicals, and it really adds to the more ancient and sirenic quality of the mermaids. There is some fun, sound design thrown in when the sisters speak to each other in their sonar communications, much like whales or dolphins. The film makers keep it from being hokey though and truly capture a magical quality in it. This is also where I noticed some missing subtitles during my screener, as there were scenes when the sisters were obviously chatting with each other with their magical voices and the translation was not offered.
While it’s not a mermaid tale for children, Agnieszka Smoczynska directs a fabulous and unique film. It’s sultry and disturbing, colorful and crazy, and endlessly entertaining. I recommend keeping an eye out for it when it comes to a theater near you, and then maybe going out for sushi!
Thanks for reading,
The Diva Del Mar
