THE LURE (2015)

Directed By: Agnieszka Smoczynska 
Written By: Robert Bolesto 
Cinematography By: Jakub Kijowski 


Cast: Martz Mazurek, Michalina Olszanka, Kinga Preis, Andrzej Konopka, Jakub Gierszal, Magdalena Cielacka, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Marcin Kowalczyk 


One dark night, at water's edge, a family of musicians encounter aquatic sirens Silver and Golden. After assuring the family that they won't eat them up, the winsome sirens are recruited to join the Figs and Dates band at a neon-lit Warsaw dance club. When Silver becomes romantically entangled with beautiful blonde bassist Mietek, the more cunning Golden, who cannot escape her bloodthirsty nature, worries that her sister's relationship will doom their shared dream of swimming to a new life in America.

It's like a Bjork album and videos not quite as arresting imagery but plenty of art structured originality and weirdness with plenty of bright colors and original flourishes that contains a constant melody and rhythm that stretches far and wide in it's own world. No that's not quite it…

A genre film that crosses into many of it's own...

This is hard as I can never truly do it justice. All I can offer is that it's not cookie cutter. It's strange cinema. Watching it under any kind of influence might make you believe you dreamed it. No my readers it is quite real. Like watching someone imagine action unfold on screen with a certain budget and with subtitles.

A gothic strange fantasy musical that has mermaids as the main characters.

That might be too direct and technical

I might be overselling it. As it isn't a big budgeted Hollywood movie. It has more of an earnest budget. So the visuals might not be as big or lush, but they are affordable. Yet nothing looks cheap just more on budget to the surroundings except for some of the more fantasy filled special effects. It carves it's way into it's own spectrum that stays quite special.

The film is foreign from Poland The first musical from there, and completely bonkers but remains composed in it's mood. That you will never be able to say that you have seen anything like it.

The film is enchanting and cruel with a dash of violence and horror. It's well shot and crazy as well as unpredictable like an extended episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT. A film that lives in it's own world and keeps adding more grandiose lore as it goes along. There is much to be said of sexuality her seems to come off as a second thought. As the creatures who can seduce and actually love but never can actually have sex. Nor really fulfill fantasies that others put upon them.

It keeps changing like a chameleon. Where you only know it's color of appearance. When you come upon it. Though never quite set a tone originally

The film is never predictable, nor boring as it seems to try and constantly reinvent itself while sticking to the character. Not quite as persona a vision, but a passionate film filled with vision. It also crosses many music genres just as the film crosses movie genres. The film does offer answers to many of the audiences questions but no real explanations. Though offers a key to s broader world that we never see it truly explore. As the film isn't a huge production.

The films attitude is more cynical taking a dark look at the worlds they are involved in and the unscrupulous characters they are surrounded by. --The film offers plenty of nudity, constantly sensuality and sexuality but very little actual sex. It stays in a tawdry environment as the mermaids become nightclub entertainers and explore that world. As one chooses to fall in love and is more innocent and the other has a hard time fighting her urges and wants to be what she was born to be.

A film you can have fun with as you never know where it is going. Nor what is going to happen next. There are Unfulfilled or explained questions that the film short changes and would have been nice to explore, but that might have been too expensive and taken the attention away from the central story. Such as introducing new abilities all of a sudden that of course are normal to them. That we in the audience only learn about later and in the middle wondering if they were suing them before and we just weren't privy. Half the film is made of music, be it sung by them or in the background soundtrack Rodney the scene. The songs are good. Not necessarily catchy or sing along worthy, but go along and help explain characters mind sets. That at times seem more like personal monologues or internal dialogue at times amongst one or many others.

The story is not quite a messed up THE LITTLE MERMAID. It is a grim fairy tale all it's own with it's share of vices. Where very few of the characters are sympathetic. That by the end it's a story of sacrifice and independence. Romantic in it's own eat it intensity, insanity, revenge and intimacy.


Grade: B