It is a French-German drama film about Mark (Sam Neil), a spy returning from a spying mission. During that period, it seems that Mark's wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), wants a divorce and does not say why she left her. However, Anna insists that the real reason is not because she found someone else.
Zulawski's grand and shivery art-therapy hallucination, a burlesque farrago of domestic dramas played close and fast in a distinctively Polish register
That the film is much more than a gawk-at-it freak show is testament to Zulawski's talent for making even the most exaggerated behavior resonate with pointed and potent emotion.
The film could be seen as a metaphor for women's liberation, the battle between the sexes, idealization of one's lover, faith vs. fate and/or a political statement...very effective as straight up, very stylish horror.
Are the characters even real? I don't know, and I don't care. Possession is an ostentatious, absurd waterfall of beauty and horror and I let it wash over me.
Adjani won the best actress prize at Cannes for her dual performance (as an unfaithful wife and her angelic doppelganger), but the whole cast is astonishing, exorcising painful feelings with an intensity that rivals that of the filmmaking.
