Possession Blu-Ray (Beyond Genres)

This release features a slipcover

Set in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, infused with Cold War-era paranoia and tension, Possession is a film that defies classification. One of the most tortured portraits of a disintegrating marriage ever presented on screen, visionary director Andrzej Żuławski masterfully blends horror and thriller conventions into an utterly unique cinema experience drawing on his own traumatic divorce and creative blacklisting in his native Poland.

Spy Mark (Sam Neil) returns to West Berlin after a mission to find that his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) wants a divorce. She is having an affair, but insists that isn't the reason. When Mark hires a private detective to get to the truth, an even more disturbing secret is uncovered Anna keeps a separate apartment housing an otherworldly, tentacled creature with a ravenous sexual appetite (created by special effects legend Carlo Rambaldo of Alien fame).

So continues the descent into a nightmarish maze of jealousy, carnality devoid of satisfaction, insanity, terror and murder where identity and reality are almost impossible to distinguish. Notorious for the demands it placed on its stars, Adjani's searing performance earned her the Best Actress award at Cannes in 1981. Savagely cut for the US market by bewildered distributors, banned in the UK for almost two decades, this restored edition showcases Possession as the director intended. It remains every bit as powerful and shocking today as it was on release.