In the Flesh: The Lure

There’s a strong whiff of Velvet Goldmine and The Rocky Horror Picture Show about The Lure, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s oddball musical/Little Mermaid adaptation about siren sisters Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Gold (Michalina Olszańska) and their brief stint in the human world as nightclub singers in Krakow. The costumes, the makeup, the hair, the essence of glam not just as an expression of rock, sexuality, and rebellion but as an extrapolation from glamour, the magical art of making things seem other than they are. The sisters are sex symbols without sex organs, seductresses whose true form is more eel than fish — they’re layered with deceptions and misconceptions, playing on one level with the perceptions of their in-universe audience and on another with our perceptions as the film’s viewers.

Smoczynska’s camerawork is serviceable in transmitting her clever premise and lively musical sequences, but the real visual draw here is the ingenious combination of prosthetics, animatronics, and CGI used to conjure the sirens’ tails into being. Watching Gold drag herself like a lungfish down the slope of a secluded beach is a deliciously wretched sight, a deconstruction of the mermaid archetype dealing more explicitly with their status as half-fish. The girls, we’re often reminded, reek of fish. Bass player Mietek (Jakub Gierszał) tells Silver she’ll always be a fish to him, not really a person. It’s a neat little metaphor for celebrity, the simultaneous exaltation and dehumanization of our cultural icons, especially young women, who in turn become both incredibly vulnerable and, sometimes, dangerous in their own right.

Mazurek and Olszańska are delightfully strange as the sisters, their slightly off-kilter performances buoyed up nicely by a wonderful supporting cast, and the film’s musical elements are both seamless and infectious, nicely worked in by the presence of sirens among normal humans. What really sells The Lure, though, is just how sexy it is. The sisters breastfeeding from their backup singer/manager (Kinga Preis), Golden seducing the much older militia lieutenant (Katarzyna Herman), those huge slimy bodies squirming and dragging and flopping — it’s a movie unafraid of sex and sexuality, and unafraid to mingle them liberally with the abject. There’s such a sense of freedom to it, a reminder that musicals can be more than just skipping and songs about being yourself no matter what.