Manda’s Movies - The Lure
The Lure - A review of a Polish Musical about Mermaids!
I walked into this movie really not knowing what to expect. It had been a crazy week and I ended up not watching the trailer or reading anything about it. But I was excited to finally start enjoying what this cement city had to offer.
This was my first trip to The Royal, and I was pleasantly surprised to find this adorable old-fashioned theatre in the middle of an otherwise ugly city. I walked into the movie, got some amazing seats and watched the title scroll by and turned to my husband… “Is this going have sub-titles?” He looked at me with wide eyes and started to panic that I would hate this very artsy movie and our night was ruined!
When you google The Lure the description is; “Two mermaid sisters become caught in a love triangle when they fall for the same man.” Well, this couldn’t be further from the truth of the actual plot. In reality and according to IMBD The Lure is actually about “a pair of mermaid sisters are adopted into a cabaret. While one seeks love with humans the other hungers to dine on the human population of the city.”
This Polish movie, originally called Córki dancingu which means Dancing Daughters captured my interest from the get-go. The beautiful art used in the initial title sequence set the stage that this fairytale about mermaids was NOT going to be your typical good-feeling American movie. Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska and written by Robert Bolesto, this movie was magical in a way that most movies we see anymore could never touch. There was no ‘written by committee’ feeling and the movie didn’t talk down to you like you were an idiot that couldn’t catch on to its subtleties. Though this was one of the first movies (5th?) and had some narrative and plot issues that many early movies often have, it was enchanting all the same.
Michalina Olszanska played Zlota (Gold) and Marta Mazurek played Srebrna (Silver) two mermaid sisters who are intrigued by human performers and then adopted by them. They are new to the world and excited about all it has to offer, and the first musical scene is amazingly stylized and reminds me of New York, New York or Hairspray… but that shines and bright excitement will soon dull as the movie becomes more serious and Gold can’t fight her mermaid instincts while Silver falls in love with a boy who doesn’t understand anything about mermaids.
The movie pulls from the original Little Mermaid story (not the Disney one but the Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Little Mermaid", published in 1837.) and used all of his mythology along with it. For example, if a mermaid falls in love with a human, but that human marries another the mermaid’s heart will break and she will become sea foam and disappear from the world. Gold and Silver know this, and though Silver is certain it is just a fairytale and that her love would never leave her, Gold is not so easily convinced and begs her sister to not change for this boy. This, of course, leads to the main conflict of the story but it’s not as simple as that before Silver can be with her love she will need to become human…
The musical scenes are mesmerizing, my personal favourite is Lozko by Gold that she sings while realizing the hell she is living in and the truth of the family she is living with. As with most mythology, the siren song of a mermaid is hypnotizing, as it has famously crashed many boats and taken many sailors lives, it is no different in this movie where the songs entrance the humans as well as the audience.
Between the body language, silent emotes shared between the two sisters as well as the stylized practical effects used on the mermaids and the world around them I was deeply impressed by this entire movie. One of the best examples of how stylized this movie is would be when Silver is becoming human and singing through her surgery, disgusting, horrifying and beautiful!
I highly recommend this movie to anyone that enjoyed Repo! The Genetic Opera and can appreciate Poland’s first musical fairytale. I was reminded of my love for Troll Hunter and other foreign movies when watching this and can’t wait to own it in the future.
I give The Lure 4/5 heart broken mermaids!
