‘The Possession’ is remembered for Isabelle Adjani’s great performance, but the role led the actress to a very dark place
It is impossible to forget her once you have seen her: a totally alienated woman walking through the subway tunnels. Chances are you’ve come across the moment on Twitter or any other social media site. The woman is dressed in blue, lurches, screams, cries and breaks a glass jug full of milk. This is the actress Isabelle Adjani and the moment belongs to the movie The possession by director Andrzej Żuławski. The film, a horror masterpiece, was released in 1981 and was so extreme that, according to the filmmaker, its protagonist tried to commit suicide.
The possessionco-starring Sam Neill, follows mark already Anna. He is a spy and when he returns home from a mission he discovers that his wife wants a divorce. She then begins to display strange and disturbing behavior.
“When he saw the finished film, he tried to commit suicide”Żuławski said in the documentary Żuławski on Żuławski (2000). “I mean, he went to the bathroom, got a razor, one of those that you use every day, with two blades, one 0.2 mm from the other and he tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists with that blade, which is kind of ridiculous and not too serious, like most stars.” The director adds that what happened gave him “a headache.” “I thought I was responsible, that I was to blame”he indicated.
Insomnia and psychological consequences: Starring in one of the best horror films greatly affected its leading actor
It is not the only time that Żuławski speaks about the event. “When he saw the film, afterwards, he tried to commit suicide because he never wanted to see the daily scenes, so he didn’t know how we saw it and he tried to commit suicide,” said the filmmaker as reported Sight and Sound. “But being Isabelle Adjani… you have to understand, in Europe, Isabelle Adjani is a diva, she is the star. He went to the bathroom and cut his wrists with a G2 blade, which cuts half a millimeter of skin and no deeper.“.
“PSYCHOLOGICAL PORNOGRAPHY”
Adjani described possession as “psychological pornography”. “The possession It’s the kind of movie you can make when you’re young. Żuławski is a director who makes you immerse yourself in his world of darkness and the demons of it. It’s okay when you’re young because you’re excited to go there,” he said in a French outlet (via IndieWire).
As he added:
His films are very special, but women are like lilies. It was a pretty incredible movie to make, but I was left bruised, inside and out. It was exciting to do it. I didn’t break any bones, but I thought, ‘How or why did I do that?’ I don’t think any actress has made two movies with him.
Adjani is not the only one who remembers the filming of The possession Thus, Neill said in the BBC in 2021: “I call it the most extreme movie I’ve ever made., in every possible way, and asked us things that I did not want to do and could not do now. “I think I escaped that movie with my sanity barely intact.”
One of the things Zulawski asked Neill to do was smack Adjani. The actor described the filmmaker in an interview with The Independent in 2016 as “a genius, but crazy.” “He asked for much more than a director should”, he recalled. “I said, ‘Look, Andrezj, I have to say no. I can’t do it. You can’t ask me to do that. I’ve never raised my hand to another human being and I have to say no. Please don’t ask me that.’ ‘I’m not going to do it.’ So, Adjani says, ‘Sam, you have to do it.’ I say, ‘Please, Isabelle, don’t ask me.’ that I had to do it. I have to say it was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever had to do on a movie.“.
In 2023, Adjani said in Interview who considers herself a “survivor”:
There was some great violence that I accepted. But over the years I have realized that it is something I could never accept again and that it is part of everything my subconscious has been dealing with and incubating. I wonder if acting has been unhealthy during certain times in my life
After rolling The possession, Adjani took a break from the world of acting. “I did it so I wouldn’t have to work all the time and they criticized me. They said, ‘Why don’t you make more movies?’ It was because my parents were sick and needed me and my children needed me. I even forgot she was an actress at certain times.”
For his performance in The possession, Adjani won the César award and the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is available in Filmin.
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