Fantasia 2016--The Lure--Agnieszka Smoczynska (2015)

Golden (Michalina Olszanska) relaxes in the bath in Agnieszka Smoczynska's delightfully original The Lure (2015)

No matter what I've seen or will see at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival this year, I pretty much guarantee that nothing will be as original or as visually and aurally inventive as Agnieszka Smoczynska's absolutely dazzling The Lure (2016).  This 80s musical fever dream about two beautiful but dangerous sirens/mermaids joining a nutso adult cabaret and finding love and food on land is startlingly gorgeous from its opening credits to its last poignant image.

Despite the Fantasia crowd's eagerness to meet this charming and talented woman director, alas, she could not make it to the festival.  In her stead, she sent a filmed introduction where Smoczynska explained how this film bubbles up from her childhood, combining fairytale elements with fond memories of being the daughter of restaurateurs.  All the while, what looked like her daughters danced with little flashlights in the background, the director's own little fairy chorus.  This sense of whimsy and fun permeated what at times could be a rather dark and foreboding tale.

One night on the beach, some wasted band members who work at a local nightclub encounter our two heroines, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska) watching them from the water.  Since sirens are known for their seductive voices, the ladies begin to draw the men into the water with their bewitching song, singing "We won't eat you, my dear," although they surely will.  The sole female band-mate lets out a piercing scream, halting the process, but we soon realize that these savvy club employees see the benefits to Silver and Golden's strangely unique act, called unsurprisingly "The Lure."  They bring them to their boss, a raging pervert who is fascinated by the girls' lack of genitalia, until he pours water onto their lower half and they sprout magnificent muscular tails.  Everyone at the club quickly becomes mesmerized by their heavenly voices and their bodily transformations.

It's when Silver starts to fall for the tow-headed bass player of the band--a human--that things start to go off the rails.  Other members of the sea creature community (yes, there are others) warn the sirens that if one was to fall in love with a human, if he/she turned and loved another, superstition dictates that the siren would dissolve into sea foam.  The only cure for such a fate is to eat the fickle bastard.  While these women are certainly beautiful in their human guise, as hungry mermaids, they sprout razor sharp pointed teeth and a craving for human flesh.  Unsurprisingly, the denizens of the club soon realize that their lucrative new act is far more dangerous than they might initially appear.

Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden perform for the crowd in The Lure

Most of the film's energy comes from its unique and rather infectious musical numbers--and this praise is from someone who can honestly say despises almost all Musicals.  Spectators are introduced to the first of these scenes by a marvelous long take that tracks through the nightclub to the pulsing disco rhythms of I Feel Love.  These numbers feature a range of different styles--ballads, dance music, even a punk song that Golden performs with aplomb.  The film's dynamic mise-en-scene and cinematography ignite into a swirling array of sounds and images as number after musical number follow each other.  Everyone in the film gives energetic and strong performances, but no one outshines the two mermaid leads, who combine seductive grace and menace in equal measure.  The horror of the film is relatively subtle, but there's a "surgical" scene that elicited cheers from the Fantasia audience, who like a touch of gore with their fairy tale fantasies.

Silver looks over the wedding party from afar

Like Anna Biller's The Love Witch, The Lure explicitly comments on how fairy tale romance rarely ends well for the women (or mermaids) who succumb to such tales.  Certainly this fairy tale leans heavily toward the Grimm.  Like Biller's film, Smoczynska's debut feature is hyper-stylized, and its creative vision is also utterly unique.  With the dearth of female filmmakers showcased at Fantasia this year (and alas, most years), The Lure should convince everyone that more women's cinematic voices deserve to be heard.