Is Possession about a harrowing divorce or a woman with an octopus kink? Why not both?

The Guardian

08-07-2025

Andrzej Żuławski's Possession is genuinely unhinged and utterly unforgettable. Żuławski called it 'a very true-to-life autobiographical story', which it is: when he made it in 1981, his own marriage had just collapsed, and as portraits of divorce go, Possession is a pretty spectacular one. But Żuławski also once described Possession as a film about a woman who 'fucks with an octopus', which it is too.
A co-production between France and West Germany that was shot in West Berlin by a Polish director, Possession opens as Mark (Sam Neill), a spy, returns home and finds that his wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), wants a divorce. She's having an affair, she reveals, ostensibly with Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) – exactly the kind of lofty weirdo you'd hate your wife to dump you for. Mark reluctantly turns over custody of their young son, Bob, but soon discovers Bob is being left unattended for long periods by Anna, who is increasingly erratic and keeps disappearing. Mark hires a private investigator to find out who she is seeing – or what she is seeing.
Something is not quite right about Possession from the start, and that's long before you get any tentacle sex. Even how it looks is a bit wrong: West Berlin is somehow both creepily clean and decaying, and haunted by an overwhelming sense of paranoia. (Anna and Mark's apartment looks out on to the Wall, which means we get shots of real patrolling soldiers.)
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The dialogue is strange and stilted, reminiscent of David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Anna and Mark's frantic arguments often devolve to the point where nothing they say makes sense – though who hasn't felt like that during a fight with a loved one? Even time itself doesn't seem to work properly; Mark loses three weeks at one point, and it is never remarked on again.
But Possession gets truly bizarre when the identity of Anna's real lover is finally revealed: a bloody, tentacled creature she's been hiding in a decrepit apartment. Alien designer HR Giger told Żuławski to hire special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi to make his frisky extraterrestrial. (For his next film, Rambaldi designed an equally grotesque alien: ET.)
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Neill and Adjani are remarkable as an anguished couple at the end of their tether. They are completely fearless: they shout, throw furniture, harm themselves and each other. Neill has called it 'the most extreme film I have ever made in every respect … I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact.'
In probably the film's most harrowing scene, Adjani screams and throws herself around a subway tunnel for what feels like hours. Much has been said about her reported breakdown after Possession – mostly by Żuławski, who spoke about her apparent suicide attempt like it was good promotional fodder. But for her part, Adjani has called Possession 'only the type of film you can do when you are young … It was quite an amazing film to do, but I got bruised, inside out.'
Possession straddles many worlds: it won acclaim and Adjani best actress at Cannes, and was also banned in the UK for many years as a video nasty. It's not quite horror, but it is often horrifying, filled with dread and only occasionally bloody. The British film critic Mark Kermode has said that both times he programmed Possession at a festival, someone in the audience passed out.
I don't believe anyone who claims they really know what Possession is about. That secret may have died with Żuławski. But it is an enjoyable puzzle to mull over. Are you watching something actually happen, or some kind of emotional truth instead? Is it deeply misogynistic, or actually a scathing portrait of male inadequacy? Perhaps it is both. Is it about how divorce reduces us to our worst, or a woman fucking an octopus? Perhaps it is both.
Possession is available to stream on Prime Video in Australia, the UK and the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here