Giving In to The Lure: A Lush, Lustful Mermaid Film at SPACE Gallery

 

A Disney mermaid movie “The Lure” is not. “Help us come to shore,” sing its two young mermaid sisters, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska), in dulcet duet to three drunk revelers on the shore, and then: “We won’t eat you yet.” We shift to a techno beat and a sparkly, boozy cabaret, where those revelers are the house band. In a back room, they examine their catch. “Smooth as Barbies down there,” one of them marvels. Naturally, Silver and Golden crush it as a sister act.

So begin several obsessions in Agnieszka Smoczynska’s 2015 musical-horror-fairy tale, with screenplay by Robert Bolesto, which has garnered a slew of indy awards, including a Special Jury Prize for World Cinema at 2016’s Sundance. Gorgeously executed, conjured with stylish, savvy magical realism, “The Lure” is both a fable about identity – and the urge to change it – and a critique of a species prone to enchantment, fetishization, exploitation, and indifference. It screens at SPACE Gallery on April 12, and lovers of musicals, horror, and/or mermaids are in for some sexy, subversive fun.