In an unspecified period of the 1980s, two sirens emerge on the surface after meeting the members of a music band who were drunk on the beach.
The two beings, who on land appear as beautiful, perfectly human girls apart from the lack of sexual organs, are named Golden and Silver and have spent much of their underwater existence. to charm and then kill the unfortunate travelers who were mesmerized by their persuasive singing.
Now the sirens are determined to change their lives and become part of a permanent show held in one of the most popular clubs in the city, where they perform on stage with their amazing voice and they do not hesitate to show their real condition as creatures with a tail, which reappears upon contact with water.
Golden e Silver become a famous duo, The Lure, and while the first begins to attend the mysterious Triton, also a creature from the sea who has become a rock star, the second falls in love with the young Mietek. A feeling that could cost her everything and threatens to divide her forever from her inseparable companion.
Without limits
Bizarre is the ideal term by which it describes this crazy fantasy-horror of Polish production, where there is everything and more.
Made in 2015 and made available now in the Netflix catalog, The Lure is in fact one of those films that both fascinates and disturbs at the same time, rich as it is in tones and influences that are distant from each other that still find a twisted but firm balance over the course of the hour and a half of viewing.
Since the evocative moving drawings accompanying the opening credits, the impression of be faced with a particular operation it becomes clear and sharp and what happens in the following minutes only confirms it. The song of the two young mermaids who attract to the sea those who will later become their hosts and exploiters is in itself already suggestive, but the best is yet to come.
Soon to dominate the scene is a strong musical soul, with numerous themed inserts perfectly intersected with the narrative axis and imbued with a surreal charge that will characterize the entire story.
Director Agnieszka Smoczynska, here in her big screen debut, already demonstrates a remarkable personality and many of the facts narrated are inspired by events she experienced in her adolescence.
At the bottom of the sea …
The basic incipit, complete with a tragic love-story, is obviously indebted to The little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, revisited in a pop and acid key that becomes more and more psychedelic as the terrestrial permanence of the two protagonists proceeds: Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska are magnificent in embodying two complementary and beautiful figures, the former determined to remain true to her wild nature and the latter sweet and unprepared for a world more cruel than expected.
Particularly harsh for the more sensitive audience are two sequences, but in general the film keeps the tone of an extravagant amusement park of excesses.
And the tone of perennial melancholy, in which echoes of a contemporary reality such as that relating to immigration are reflected – the sirens on the other hand are and remain two elements extraneous to the society of men – and to the exploitation of women, the Lure envelops in further nuances, leaving behind that swirling flow of sounds and images the strength of the story expresses multiple and profound meanings, not always visible to a superficial glance.