Synopsis
"Polish writer-director
Andrei Żuławski remains a controversial figure among cinephiles. Working first in Poland and later in France, his no-holds-barred filmmaking has generated a number of unnerving works from various genres: absurdist science fiction that fuses
Tarkovsky and
Herzog, Kafkaesque black comedy-cum-war film, and sanguinary melodrama. Topping them all is this feverish character study of a man who comes unglued when his wife leaves him. Here Zulawski blends Polanskiesque uncanny and Bergmanian psychodrama with the then-burgeoning subgenre of body horror associated with
Alien and early
Cronenberg. In addition, the setting – a grim Berlin neighborhood, near the
Berlin Wall – suggests that the film may also be a particularly abject political allegory. The nightmarish result became an immediate cult classic, even though it was shorn of so much of its sex and violence for its initial US release that it lost a third of its running time. This re-release of the full-length version gives audiences a chance to marvel at the fearless performances by
Sam Neill and especially
Isabelle Adjani as both the faithless wife and her doppelganger." –
David Pendleton
