The promiscuity of Anna, played by Isabelle Adjani, is the focal point in Zulawskiʼs 1981 banned video nasty POSSESSION. However, filing this film under “exploitation cinema” is a far too convenient solution to the questions of female sexuality highlighted by the film.

Anna gives birth to a tentacled monster that she cultivates in secrecy…

Conventional narrative resolutions and clear-cut ideological stances are absent from POSSESSION: it is a bewildering film, but necessarily so, as its discussion centres around the enigmatic topic of Annaʼs untethered sexuality. The cinematography, the acting (which is remarkable throughout) and narrative all contribute to the amorphous metaphor for that which Mark (Sam Neill) cannot readily comprehend. Or, more accurately, that which is represented as a symbol of ʻothernessʼ by the patriarchal discourse of cinema.

Zulawskiʼs position on the monstrous feminine is indecisive. By providing no clear vantage point for sanity, POSSESSION does not simply demonise Anna and her sexuality by encoding them as oppositional. Instead, the viewer is placed empathically amongst the insanity while the art direction ensures that this film is experiential, not observational.

The monstrous feminine is presented as formless, inexpressible and utterly terrifying.

Anna gives birth to a tentacled monster that she cultivates in secrecy, and although the creature is not a physical threat, its position of ʻothernessʼ as the presumed source of Annaʼs insanity reaffirms it as the antagonist in the narrative. Its wrath is cruelly felt at its own birth in Berlinʼs abandoned subway. The scene presents the natural female processes of childbirth as abhorrent and violent; blood and white mucus pour from Annaʼs mouth and genitalia. The monstrous feminine is presented as formless, inexpressible and utterly terrifying.

One of POSSESSION’S finest achievements is its suitably twisted assimilation of gender representation conventions. Anna is dressed as Mary Magdalene throughout the film, a use of iconography that simultaneously describes her as an innocent and a whore; which is also used to great effect in THE SHINING to describe Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) as an innocent victim of a supernatural tormentor. Although dressed as the same archetype, THE SHINING and POSSESSION’S treatment of the model differs significantly. The expedients of female destiny in cinema are thrust upon both characters and hysteria is conjured in their struggle to survive in a patriarchal environment.

… for Anna, it is her inability to decipher her own sexuality that prevents her escape.

However, Wendy’s hysteria is resolved and escape made possible by her fulfilment of the ‘mother’ paradigm. Whereas Anna refuses to comply with the behavioural patterns proposed by her suitors: the whore or the mother. In contrast to THE SHINING, it’s Anna’s own inability to decipher and resolve her own sexuality that prevents her escape from hysteria and as such is the instigator of her own demise.

In many respects POSSESSION is a conventional film, as Annaʼs refusal to obey society’s laws by compromising her sexuality to the patriarch inevitably leads to her insanity (akin to Blanche DuBois), and in line with classical narrative convention, her continued insubordination leads to her death. However, Zulawskiʼs film does offer a refreshing representation of the masculine insecurities surrounding female sexuality, and although the tired standards of the male gaze are present, they are mutated by the gruesome cinematic technique.

Read our review of POSSESSION here.

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