So it’s been a few months since my last entry in this series. I guess I’ve just felt intimidated at the prospect of working my way through the films for which no English subtitles are available. However, that day is not here yet. Today’s movie, The Lure (Córki Dancingu) is readily available (with English subtitles) and is really worth taking a look at, especially in terms of genre in general and horror specifically in Polish cinema.
When I started this series, I pointed out how there were rather few local horror films in this country in which I’ve come to live. Today’s film, a horror/fairy tale/art-house/mermaid/siren/heart eating musical set in and around a Warsaw nightclub in the 1980’s, offers a fascinating case study, especially in terms of the differences between its release domestically and internationally. If you watch the International trailer below, it is mermaids, mermaids, mermaids, sharp teeth, a bit of choreography, and the nightclub setting:
If now, you watch the Polish trailer, all you get is the nightclub and sexy times:
The respective posters tell the same story. Even the titles imply different films. “The Lure” sounds connected to fishing, and hence, fish – and their tails, but also something alluring, lured towards some kind of trap. “Córki Dancingu” directly translates as “Daughters of the Dance-Party”; it is a movie about girls at a nightclub. Nothing supernatural here.
I can only assume the Polish distributer felt there wasn’t a market domestically for a mermaid-horror-musical and decided to lean hard into the cool sexiness of the nightlife. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t do great in its home country as people bought tickets for one film and got quite another. Internationally, distributors leaned into its weird-genre-hybrid charms and this ambitious, fascinating, admittedly not-entirely-successful-but-still-essentially-likeable oddity found its audience. It’s on Netflix here in Poland and I wonder if, having been around for a while, the people coming to it now are more aware of what they’re getting into, and are thus more satisfied with what they get.
The Lure (2015)
Narratively, the film is inspired by a number of sources. The parents of both Agnieszka Smoczińska (the director) and Barbara and Zuzanna Wronska (Ballady i Romanse, the band who did all the music for the film) were part of the Warsaw nightclub scene in the eighties (as a club owner and performers respectively) and the three women, having grown up in similar circumstances, reportedly wanted to engage with their shared childhood experiences. The local legend of the “Mermaid of Warsaw” (more on this below) also figures into things. Finally, the most structural narrative influence is clearly Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” (a story that was explicitly written to give children something gentler and kinder to read, with a nice happy ending, but which to modern eyes, is incredibly dark and sad), which really shapes the main thread of the plot.
In short, two mermaids, Złota (Golden) and Srebna (Silver) surface in the Wisła river (which runs through Warsaw) and find the three members of a band, “Figs and Dates” (who may also be a family – it’s not entirely clear) grilling and singing on the river bank. Srebna is instantly enamored of the handsome young bass player so they come ashore and join the band at a nightclub. In this version, they have legs as long as they’re dry, but what they lack will play into the story soon. The owner of the club is wowed by what the band has found and having overcome very brief concerns of having seemingly underage girls in his club, puts them to work as backup singers and strippers (after having some private time to sample their wares for himself – in a way that, though we don’t see exactly what happens, seems to have clearly been abusive). The customers are amazed by their tails which appear once wet and their beautiful voices, and they are an instant hit. But the central story is how Srebna falls for the young bass player and how her sister tries to pull her away from this doomed love which will eventually destroy her. What follows is only a spoiler if you haven’t read the Andersen.
So, in Andersen’s story, the mermaid must sacrifice her voice in order to get legs so she can go on land to meet her prince. She does this under the condition that if he marries someone else and she doesn’t kill him, she will die and turn to sea foam. So, in this version, she has legs if she wants them, but only has sexual organs on her fish tale. As the drummer/father(?) of the band presents them to the club owner, “They’re smooth, like Barbie dolls.” Thus, her relationship with the bassist can only go so far and he’s pretty turned off by the whole fish sex thing. And so, she undergoes an illicit, underground surgery where her tail is sawed off and presumably given to the woman whose lower half she then has sewn on. In the process, she loses her ability to sing, the girls lose their positions at the club, the band kind of falls apart, and the bassist still doesn’t love her.
Before you know it, we’re on a wedding boat, he’s married, and Złota is begging her sister to eat him before the sun comes up. In the end, Srebna goes to him, they embrace, her teeth turn sharp and scary, and at the last second, as the sky goes all golden, she just hugs him, loves him, and dissolves into foam. Złota rips the guy’s throat out and runs off into the sea. You know, it’s a story for kids!
Now, when you think “mermaid” I doubt horror is the first genre that comes to mind, but I think a linguistic issue comes to play here. In Polish there is only one word for ‘mermaids’ (beautiful women with fish tales that lonely sailors have spotted since time immemorial – though they’re usually just manatees or something similarly pretty) and ‘sirens’ (evil women from Greek mythology – who originally had bird parts – who would sing beautiful songs to lure sailors into crashing on the rocks and drowning). As it is one word in Polish, the two creatures are combined in one, and the two mermaids in this movie are also sirens (a kind of monster) with a habit of luring men with song and sometimes ripping them apart and eating their hearts. We only see this once or twice, but I think it’s enough to justify classifying this as ‘horror’ insofar as it is a “monster movie” of sorts, though perhaps a bit closer to the old Universal classics in that the monsters are the most sympathetic characters – and are simply misunderstood, mistreated, and taken advantage of by the human protagonists.
Beyond the notes of horror, particularly when hearts get munched on, the dominant tone is that of a fairy tale in that these ‘monsters’ are totally of the world of the story. No one’s mind is blown that mermaids exist; it’s just extraordinary to have caught a couple of them. And it is obvious that, as sirens, they could be dangerous – one of the first things the club owner asks upon meeting them is if they bite, but the drummer/father says they’re still young (he’ll learn how wrong he was later). Sometimes in fairy tales, things just happen and they are accepted by the characters within without shock. That passivity is featured here. Also, I find it interesting that almost no character in the film gets a name, but just a role. In the end credits, the members of the band, all prominent in the story, are simply “Percussionist,” “Bassist,” and “Vocalist” just as in a fairy tale, the characters will be “The Prince,” “The Shoemaker,” or “The Witch.”
So, regarding fairy tales, another one is very important here. In Poland, it’s quite common for some legendary creature to be associated with a given city. Wrocław has its gnomes, Kraków (where I live) has got a dragon under the hill, and Warsaw has a mermaid – she’s even on the official crest of the city. The story of the Warsaw mermaid is that she came to the banks of the river and at first the local fishermen were upset that someone was eating all their fish, so they made plans to catch her, but when they heard her sing, they loved her and allowed her to stay. However, one greedy merchant decided to take advantage of the situation, caught her in a net, and took her around to fairs and markets, displaying her beauty and monstrosity for a price. But, fortunately, the fishermen heard her cries and came to rescue her. Ever since then, armed with sword and shield, she has been there to protect the city.
What this story brings to the mix, besides a historical link between the city and mermaids/sirens, is the theme of exploitation, a significant undercurrent of Smoczyński’s film. Just as the Warsaw mermaid was captured and put on display, Srebna and Złota are, almost immediately upon entering human society, brought into the sex industry. The drummer has them strip for the club owner to show off their oddly featureless groins before splashing them with water and inviting him to digitally explore the slits on their tails. Satisfied, the owner wants some time alone with them. It’s interesting how impassive they are through this process. The director has stated in interviews that she intended a parallel with the immigrant experience, and the exploitation inherent within. At least at the beginning, the girls are unperturbed by the requests these humans make of them. However, after being left alone with this sweaty, sleazy older man, they are found unconscious, naked (in human form) and seemingly hurt by the experience. Even these magical creatures of uncertain age and experience can be exploited.
This extends into scenes with the family/band. In a late scene, the girls ask why they never play Frisbee, or go get ice cream, or get paid. In short, they are not family – they are not treated with love and care as children, and at the same time, they are not employees, paid for their services. They give of their bodies and their love and their voices and are afforded no respect or care or remuneration in return. In fact, upon realizing that they may be responsible for a man murdered by the river bank, the drummer/father abruptly punches them in the face, knocking them out, and the band rolls them up in carpets and throws them off a bridge. Złota responds to this upon return by eating his thumb (so, they do bite) and Srebna responds by having her tail chopped off so she can finally ‘be a girl’ for the bassist and they can have sex.
Sex and the (nude female) body loom especially large over the proceedings, and it is interesting how much it feels like this is a film made by a woman. While so many characters may leer at Srebna and Złota, the camera doesn’t. The body is a (super)natural thing and there’s nothing remarkable about someone walking around with no clothes on; the two of them are often unclothed, but they don’t seem quite naked – they wouldn’t normally be wearing clothes anyway – and their matter-of-fact manner is striking. There is also attention given to the clammy, scaled corporeality of their fishiness, the most natural thing for them, but something gross and/or fascinating for others. Similarly, physical desire is a strong presence, whether in terms of a bloody hunger for men’s hearts, a sweaty late night hook up, or Srebna’s desperation to have a full female body with which to consummate her love, and finally feel her affections fully returned.
It’s striking to me that, for all that Srebna meets a tragic end, she is really the only character in the film who is ever actually happy. However ill-advised her love is, she does feel it and the moment before turning to foam, she is at peace, glowing with joy. Złota is distraught throughout by her sister’s choices. Triton makes a few appearances and tries to talk sense into her. The handsome bassist isn’t into the tail and once she’s had her surgery, is uncomfortable in new ways. And every other denizen of this vodka fueled nightlife world, in spite of the surface level hedonism, seems suffused with emptiness and regret. The film is sometimes frenetic and wild, and sometimes libidinous, but more than anything else, it is sad. I assume that these notes are the most autobiographical elements of Smoczyński’s feature.
Which brings me to the songs. It is a musical and some of the music is quite good. However, it is in the musical numbers that I think the film sometimes feels less successful. Many of the songs seem to exist to primarily express a feeling, a concept, and rarely if ever link directly to the action of the narrative. Thus, they bring the story to a halt most of the time and while there is artistic and lyrical value to them and their filming, they give the film a disjointed quality that doesn’t always serve. I think there is a 75 minute, tight, dramatic, effective story tucked away inside of this sometimes shambolic film.
However, I think it’s a less interesting approach to focus on how something doesn’t work rather than considering what these other elements contribute, even if I might find them frustrating. I suspect the director didn’t really want to make a straight narrative film, and that these other tastes of life that suffuse this world express something of her own personal childhood experience of this scene. I could be wrong, but it feels as if there had been a lot of openness in the filming, filling every nook and cranny with character and theme and expression in often unscripted ways, and that it really was brought together in editing. If anything, rather than the songs and ancillary action interfering with the flow of the story, maybe the strength of the central story stands in the way of the film working as a more stream of consciousness-abstract piece. My mind just wants to lean on narrative as it is the easiest thing; it’s what I’ve been the most conditioned to focus on.
In the song sequences, and also in much of the negative space around the central story, there are so many little details, glimpses of the lives and failures and betrayals of various characters. This night-time world is full of lived-in character nuance, clearly meaningful to Smoczyńska. In an interview, she described how it was in her mother’s nightclub that she had her “first shot of vodka, first cigarette, first sexual disappointment, and first important feeling for a boy.” For example, we see the relationship between the Drummer and the Vocalist fall apart and we don’t really know why. The film isn’t telling their story, but they are afforded their own lives in which significant things happen even if we aren’t paying attention to them. In the end, when the Bassist has been killed, I still wasn’t sure if he was their son or not. They were at the wedding, miserable and avoiding each other – do they now have this grief to deal with as well?
There are so many little pieces like this. In one aside, Złota is picked up by a woman presenting herself as Militia (what the Police were called during communism). The Milita woman claims that Złota had eaten “a member of the public who was out on the town” (which she had), and in song, they flirt, pretend to point guns at each other, and eventually go back to the Militia lady’s place for a spot of piscine sex. At the end of all of this, the woman puts a gun to Złota’s head and Złota looks like she’s about to rip out her throat. What happened next? We don’t know. I feel like this is here to see the difference of how the girls interact in human society. Złota can satisfyingly hook up with someone without needing to turn to sea foam (and then maybe kill her). Triton can front a punk band and garner a bit of worship, but still just be here ‘on holiday.’ Srebna, on the other hand, is trapped in her love, in wanting what she can’t have.
The final effect is wistful, lost. We have been through this fairy tale, and while the little mermaid is happy in her death (which is kind of true in Andersen’s story too in its strange, creepy coda), there are no happy endings for anyone else – just blood and loss, and the open sea. It’s a unique, odd little movie, and while I can’t claim that it entirely works for me, I’m glad it exists, and I’m curious what else Smoczyńska will do.