Is Possession about a harrowing divorce or a woman with an octopus kink? Why not both?
Sam Neill barely made it out alive. Isabelle Adjani was left ‘bruised, inside out’. It might be puzzling, it might be brilliant, and it will never leave you
Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is genuinely unhinged and utterly unforgettable. Żuławski called it “a very true-to-life autobiographical story”, which it is: when he made it in 1981, his own marriage had just collapsed, and as portraits of divorce go, Possession is a pretty spectacular one. But Żuławski also once described Possession as a film about a woman who “fucks with an octopus”, which it is too.
A co-production between France and West Germany that was shot in West Berlin by a Polish director, Possession opens as Mark (Sam Neill), a spy, returns home and finds that his wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), wants a divorce. She’s having an affair, she reveals, ostensibly with Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) – exactly the kind of lofty weirdo you’d hate your wife to dump you for. Mark reluctantly turns over custody of their young son, Bob, but soon discovers Bob is being left unattended for long periods by Anna, who is increasingly erratic and keeps disappearing. Mark hires a private investigator to find out who she is seeing – or what she is seeing.
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