The Lure (Córki dancingu)

As someone with a well-established penchant for bizarre films, I can say with some authority that Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska’s debut, The Lure, is, without a doubt, a truly strange piece of work. The part I’m struggling with is not the trivial question “Is it weird?” but the much more significant query “Is it good?” After extensive consideration, I’m mostly in favor, but Smoczynska’s utterly unique genre mashup is a little too light on story and a little too heavy on self-indulgence to earn my unvarnished praise — although I have to admit, it’s a fascinating experience that definitely has an audience, although I’m not sure how broad that audience might be or where I fit into it.

This story of man-eating mermaids blends a Lynchian quality of atmospheric dread with a touch of Cronenbergian body horror and a heavy dose of Baz Luhrmann — did I forget to mention that The Lure is a musical? Yes, this is the horror-based Euro-pop take on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid that nobody knew they wanted (probably because most people don’t want anything of the sort). Screenwriter Robert Bolesto’s script sticks closer to the themes of Andersen’s original fairy tale by leaning into the darker aspects of its mythology. But any sort of tonal consistency goes out the window as soon as the singing starts.

When two mermaid sisters named Golden (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are drawn to shore by a cute bass player named Mietek (Jakub Gierszal), a loose semblance of a narrative is initiated in which the duo join his floundering band playing in a seedy Warsaw strip club. The girls are young, beautiful and frequently nude, making them an instant hit — but they only have vaginas when in their aquatic form and need to feed on human flesh, complicating Silver’s blossoming romance with Mietek and providing the opportunity for the film to make some interesting statements on gender politics. Unfortunately, this opportunity is largely squandered in a particularly disjointed third act.

Smoczynska is using the mermaid mythos as a lens through which to comment on the inherent power of female sexuality in response the objectifying male gaze, and if The Lure stuck with this conceit, it could very well have been a masterful counterpoint to androcentric cinematic forms. But Smoczynska lacks the restraint to keep the film on track, digressing into excess with constant musical numbers that amount to little more than adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy. I will say that, after decades of watching male adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies at the movies, it was refreshing to see a film making some strides toward parity — I just wish the proceedings hadn’t felt like a two-hour pop-music video that stupefyingly abandoned a promising feminist agenda.

Ultimately, my inability to engage with musicals undermines my capacity to get fully on board with The Lure, despite its singular sensibilities. Those with a more pronounced affinity for fanciful song-and-dance numbers may find more here to love. I can say unequivocally that it’s the strangest film playing in town this week, which definitely scores some points in my book. I’ve never seen anything quite like The Lure, and while I probably wouldn’t want to again, it was certainly worth the effort. Not Rated. Polish with English subtitles.

Now Playing at Grail Moviehouse.