Le Leurre

I just came from a screening of this movie at the filmPolska festival in Berlin. I enjoyed it more than I expected, because the film description made me a bit apprehensive. But it turned out very good! I enjoyed the unexpected mix of comedy, drama, music, horror, fairy tale and a bit of eroticism. It also had a nice flair of the 1980s Poland. The visual part of the film is great: the mermaids are very realistic (if you can say that about a mermaid), with long and heavy fishtails, and the actresses give a great performance. Despite their prettiness, the mermaid sisters look inhuman, animalistic. Mermaids are said to sing extraordinary beautiful song to attract men (and then kill them, heh), so I think it was a difficult task to create music to reflect this. However, it worked brilliantly. I was also pleasantly surprised by the subtle eroticism which never bordered with vulgarity. (It was also great to see a love scene between two women, I didn't expect it from a Polish movie.) Great job!

This is a solidly great film. It delivers on everything it promises - beautiful, original creature effects, a real sense of menace, boobs, and a fantastic musical score - and blithely throws in a few extras, like well-developed, interesting characters, a wonderful surreality, beautiful visuals, and a legitimately new twist on a story as old as the hills.

If there's any small criticism I have of this film, it's that a couple times there are characters that appear suddenly, do something, and then vanish, only to reappear later. There is no explanation of these characters, sometimes not even a name. I don't mind the lack to linear reality, but I did find myself asking questions about how these individuals fit into the greater story, and whether explanatory scenes had been cut. The only other not-positive thing I could say is that the dolphin noises are maybe a little silly.

That's honestly it. I really really enjoyed this movie, and I'm so glad the Calgary Underground Film Festival showed it. It needs more publicity!

In fact, I'm currently very frustrated because I can't find this movie or its soundtrack available anywhere. There's a song in the middle of the film that I'd love to listen to again, the 'Bloody Gloomy' song, and neither the clip nor the audio seem to exist online. Actually, I would love to watch the whole movie again; it's a very rich film, visually, with a lot of attention paid to little details like props and blocking and costumes. Especially as I was reading subtitles, I feel like I could gain a lot from a second viewing. I can only hope a North American distributor picks it up, as I would like to legitimately buy it and support Ms. Smoczynska. Good cinema deserves to be supported!

Which brings me to my last point.

This is actually my first review on IMDb, and I have to admit I'm leaving it partly out of frustration with the only other review for this film. If you don't like musicals, don't go see musicals! And if you see that a movie is classified as a musical, and you don't like musicals, and you go and see the musical anyway, PLEASE don't leave a negative review on the internet just because the MUSICAL that you CHOSE to see had MUSIC in it. That's like giving a horror movie a low score because it was scary! Come on now. You're discouraging people from going to see a perfectly good film because you don't like its genre, rather than any inherent flaw in the film itself. That's hardly fair. I hope people looking this movie up will give it a chance - it deserves much, much higher than a 3. I promise!

Coalescing the elements of horror, comedy, romance, musical, fantasy & coming-of-age drama into one abstract & ambitious fairytale, The Lure is an art-house endeavour that brims with fresh ingredients but it isn't a film for all. While some may be enamoured by its uniqueness, others will despise it for its muddy premise.

Set in Warsaw during the 1980s, The Lure follows a pair of mermaid sisters who are adopted by a family of musicians and are soon enlisted for gigs at the nightclub they regularly perform at. While one of them seeks companionship with the humans, the other is unable to escape her bloodthirsty nature and kills people with zero remorse.

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska, The Lure is no doubt arresting from the visual standpoint and adds few new things to the mermaid lore but it also becomes repetitive after a while and is unable to immerse the viewers into its tale or make them invest in the characters inhabiting it. Also, there is no explanation for the significance of its 1980s setting.

The atmosphere is mysterious & sexually charged, songs are intriguing & tuneful, romance subplot feels forced, while the horror part is only present in bits n pieces. The chemistry between the two girls playing the mermaids is electric and fascinating to watch but the rest of the cast barely has any meat on them, and their presence makes no difference whatsoever.

On an overall scale, The Lure is a finely envisioned & well conceptualised idea but it's also poorly executed. Its plot is intriguing but never engaging, its images are aesthetically pleasing but never alluring, and although the effort is commendable, it's never emotionally involving. Promising & flavourful at first, it doesn't take long for The Lure to turn into a pungent smelling sea foam.

One would think that a story of predatory mermaids taking a holiday in a seedy cabaret could only be a disaster, but the filmmakers made it work here. This is a bit of a dark movie. I wish I understood Polish, because the subtitled lyrics of the songs were clunky compared with the fine voices of the leads playing the siren sisters.

Most of the musical numbers and dancing were well-choreographed, but a couple of sequences didn't quite gel. A bit less time is devoted to developing the most critical romance of the movie than it needed, which unfortunately lets a bit of air out of the ending.

The visuals and effects were surprisingly good. The mermaid tails especially were well done, with details such as broken scales and scars adding chilling realism. Be warned that some parts of the movie are a bit gruesome; the critical difference between traditional mermaids and their darker cousins is made clear on several occasions. Younger children probably shouldn't watch.

There are quite a few movies written around mermaids, but this is the first I have seen about sirens. Hollywood, take note-"The Lure" demonstrates that this area has a lot of dramatic potential.

All in all, definitely worth a one-time watch.

Not going to lie, I had no idea about this film till I saw the upcoming artwork for the release of this film on Criterion Collection. I was instantly intrigued. Mermaids? Hell yeah! I don't think I've seen anything from Polish cinema; I only really watch foreign films when there is a good amount of buzz for a film and I feel I need to see it. I have to say this film is weird and bizarre but overall I felt it was quite creative despite not always hitting the right notes (not a pun on this being a musical, I swear).

The film is about two beautiful mermaids who befriend a rock band and then use their condition to become part of the group and entertain fans. Along the way one of the mermaids falls in love with a group member and longs to become a human to win his affection. The other has blood lust and is out to slash the throats and eat the hearts of men. Visually the performance scenes and the presentation of other dark scenes are done wonderfully.

I thought the film had a nice mix of being a horror film, a fantastical film, and a rock opera. The music was often catchy although I wasn't sure about the lyrics at all times (since they were very literal). The film is fairly erotic and captivating mainly due to the beauties of the two leads. The film does well to bring in mermaid lore and showing them as violent even if they may look beautiful. It basically felt like a horror take of The Little Mermaid at times.

My only concern is the film felt kind of imbalanced since it seemed fluid and didn't have a strong sense of accomplishing anything. Scenes just occur one into the next and seem like a progression without any real motivation. It's still a highly imaginative venture one that left an imprint, as I am sure was the intention. I'm not sure if I will pick it up on Criterion blu-ray but I am pretty pleased with the sort of outlandish nature of what was presented.

7.5/10