SFF NOTES: The Lure (2015, Dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

For those who found Disney's take on Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Little Mermaid' a little too "Capital P" princess. Agnieszka Smoczyńska's The Lure may be just the tonic. Less simpering teenagers, more face eating sirens; fewer singing crabs, more hard rock sea kings and strip clubs.

Then again, fans of comprehensible narrative, character development and momentum, may be firmly tested. If you squint long enough, there are discernible nods to HCA - a kinda witch things intimates one of our two mermaids can swap her "Barbie mound" for a real vagina at the cost of her voice, and there is a kind of romance going on to push her to do it, but the cavalcade of visual non-sequiturs makes short work of any emotional connection.

Smoczyńska's film goes the slimy hardcore route on the fantasy horror musical melange. There is a lot of "what am I actually watching" in the proceedings, sometimes because it is truly genre bending, sometimes because it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Once the thrill of the musical numbers wears off (and to be honest only one or two of them have any real narrative pushing value - there is a lot of singing of random sentences), that conceit only serves to slow the proceedings down with noise.

Not that the film has any real momentum to fuck with.

Why do I keep going back to Polish cinema?

★★

Trailer:

The Lure screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.