Possession | 1981 | France/Germany | Andrzej Zulawski
Holding the distinction of winning the award at the Cannes Film Festival for its lead actress Isabelle Adjani, Andrzej Zulawski’s French-German production is a rather metaphysical and Freudian nightmare of imagery and disturbing sequences. Anna and Mark are a married couple, their home life fraught with the most deeply rooted tension, usually escalating into violence, especially after Anna reveals she is having an affair. Mark becomes obsessed, their relationships becoming ever twisted and warped until it’s revealed that Anna’s lover isn’t exactly normal. Highly symbolic and pitched at a hysterical level of mania, Zulawski’s horror film may simply have been branded as a nasty simply for its bewildering confusion about what its actually about.