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by

James Rose

Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure (2015) is, like its mermaid protagonists, Golden (Michalina Olszańska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek), a peculiar hybrid: part Horror, part Musical, it is an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid that has been fused with biographical experiences from the director’s teenage years, all integrated into the landscape of 1980’s Poland. Combined, The Lure emerges as a coming-of-age narrative that charts Golden and Silver’s transition from teenage girls to young women through increasingly mature first experiences – the “first shot of vodka, first cigarette, first sexual disappointment and first important feeling for a boy.” It is these first attractions and sexual awakenings that form the film’s dramatic core; while Golden, the more aggressive of the two, engages in active seduction, lesbian sex, and savage assaults on men, Silver falls in love with Mietek (Jakub Gierszał), the drummer at the strip club where the mermaids have found themselves living and working. While this affection is reciprocated, the couple cannot physically consummate their love – not necessarily because of the complexities of interspecies sex but more because Silver is not fully a woman, for her body is a hybrid of a female torso and a fish’s tail. There is a further peculiarity about Silver’s body – when out of water she has human legs but between them is only a smooth curve of flesh that is, crudely, described as being “smooth as Barbie dolls.” It is only when she is in water that her human legs transform into the distinctive tail and her reproductive organs are revealed.

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