Yeah. we've been trying to snatch this baby off the wall at The Belcourt since they first tacked it up (behind the concession counter, wisely). And the movie it represents is no less phantasmagorical:
Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 fever dream Possession, seen mostly in a chopped-and-scattered ’80s U.S. release but revived to great enthusiasm in a director's cut earlier this year.
Seriously, when people tell you they've seen it all — the Hausus, the I Am Cubas, the Darktown Strutters — here's a cinematic Black Lotus card you can throw down with confidence. The deranging effects of sexual jealousy have never been portrayed with more unhinged verve, between Bruno Nuytten's madly careening camera and know-no-fear performances by Sam Neill and especially Isabelle Adjani, whose subway-tunnel freakout makes the entire combined Nicolas Cage/Christopher Walken oeuvre look like Merchant-Ivory material.
Possession plays just two nights only at The Belcourt, 9:20 p.m. and midnight Friday and Saturday. We can't think of a better description than the one Zulawski reportedly pitched to Paramount head Charles Bluhdorn: "a film about a woman who fucks an octopus."
