THE LURE: What a Treat! A Brilliant Polish Camp Horror

December twenty-fifth, the first day of Christmas. New Star Wars film ruled the screens, probably the biggest hit of the decade; in smaller theaters, Listy do M. 2, the biggest Polish hit of the year, was slowly breathing its last. Between these two cinematic behemoths The Lure – a camp musical with elements of fairy tale and perverse horror, set in Poland in the 1980s, one of the most interesting Polish films of recent years.

Let’s repeat it once again – The Lure is a camp musical with elements of fairy tale and perverse horror, set in Poland in the 1980s. At first glance it might seem that Agnieszka Smoczyńska, making her feature-length debut, decided to tick off all the styles and conventions that Polish cinema has so far consistently ignored. The Lure, however, offers much more than just a collage of inspirations from genres most Polish directors fear more than the liquidation of the Polish Film Institute.

Using fairy tale, horror, and musical, Smoczyńska tells a story about the experience of growing up in the waning years of the People’s Republic of Poland; an experience that to some extent shaped the sensibility of an entire generation, represented, among others, by the film’s director herself and by the Wrońskie sisters from the band Ballady i romanse, who are responsible for the soundtrack.

In The Lure there are therefore no political events, no Solidarity carnival, no end of martial law, nor is there the drabness characteristic of films set in this period; instead there are neon lights of nightclubs, sequined costumes, and disco hits brought in from abroad. Although all of this carries the makeshift shabbiness typical of the decade, in Smoczyńska’s hands this shabbiness is not pathetic but fascinating – it has its own color and atmosphere, smells of cologne, and tastes like menthol Marlboros.

If Wanda i banda were performing at the film’s Adria club, she would probably sing about a disc jockey baring his fangs over the mixing console. In The Lure, however, the fangs are bared by two teenage mermaids – Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszańska) – fished out of the Vistula by members of the band Figs and Dates (Kinga Preis, Jakub Gierszał, and Andrzej Konopka). Oh, and the fangs are not metaphorical, but very real.

Gifted with beautiful voices, the mermaids become not only a sensation of Warsaw’s nightlife but also – because of their murderous tendencies – heroines of police files. In this bizarre fantasy, into which a bouncer would not let realism enter for love nor money, camp goes hand in hand with grotesque, and macabre unexpectedly intertwines with lyricism.

The Lure is above all an initiation story, anchored not so much in a specific decade as in its childhood memory, filtered through desires, imaginings, and fears.

One could probably describe this film as a crazy combination of the styles of David Cronenberg and John Waters (although Smoczyńska herself primarily points to inspirations from the works of Aleksandra Waliszewska), but in my opinion it is closer to Jaromír Jireš’s masterpiece Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, in which the title heroine explained the changes associated with growing up through an old vampiric folk tale.

The Lure does not need concrete points of reference, however; it manages perfectly well on its own. And although I could accuse Smoczyńska of the fact that some scenes seem not to fit the rest of the film, and that the plot has a few too many threads and is unnecessarily complicated, somehow I don’t feel like it. From the very scene in which a sequined Kinga Preis sings a Donna Summer hit, I was sold. And even superfluous secondary characters did not spoil it.

So if you plan to watch one Polish film in the year that is just ending, let it be The Lure. Not necessarily because it is the best. Above all because you are unlikely to see another film like it for a long time.