Terri Berends
The debut feature from Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, The Lure (or Daughters of Dancing) is the story of mermaid sisters Golden and Silver who fall in love with rock and roll then try to make their way in the human world. Drawing on Smoczynka’s own upbringing in a Soviet era club and on centuries of Mermaid lore, the film touches on themes of transformation, ambition, patriarchy and romance.
Across centuries and cultures mermaids (or variations on the form) have been capricious creatures living beneath the waves. In the version most people are familiar with they seem to exist only to lure sailors to their doom on long voyages (really not sure what’s in it for the mermaids) or to occasionally shepherd a ship out of danger. See? Capricious. The most well-known version of this tale (to western ears at any rate) is The Little Mermaid. A fairy tale published by Hans Christian Anderson in 1837 it was popular with children and adults, so much so that the Little Mermaid herself became a symbol of Copenhagen commemorated in a statue in the harbour.
Walt Disney began sketching out a film version of the tale in the 1940’s but war got in the way. In the late 1980’s Disney again looked at the story and the 1989 release of Disney’s The Little Mermaid is hailed as the beginning of the Disney Renaissance. Disney’s Little Mermaid is probably the most familiar version of the story to most Westerners. There are certainly shades of that story in The Lure as well as shades of the original fairy tale.
The lore is similar in both - young mermaids who fall in love with the human world, magical singing voices and the desire to not just live in the human world but to be human, no matter the cost.
In Disney’s version, Ariel sacrifices her voice in order to get legs, to become human. In Anderson’s version, the cost is much higher. Our little mermaid must not only sacrifice her voice but every step she takes it will be like walking on daggers. At the point of transformation, the Sea Witch tells her “Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you.” The Lure takes things in a slightly different direction.
The lore is common that a mermaid loses her voice when she falls in love with a man. That, if he marries another, our Mermaid heroine will turn to sea-foam at dawn on the day after his wedding unless she kills him.
The Lure takes all this history and more and turns it into a coming of age story of two sisters trying to navigate careers, humanity and men. Many versions of the Mermaid legend depict the mermaids as irresistible, similar to the Sirens of Greek mythology. Their voices luring men to a watery grave, their enchanting and problematic forms alluring to men and women alike. The sisters at the heart of The Lure are irresistible as performers and as sexual objects. Everyone is enchanted by them, wants them in some way, wants the ideal, impossible mermaid. How baffling and traumatic it must be to be wanted by everyone but only as an ideal, never as yourself. The story of The Little Mermaid, the story of The Lure, is what happens when a woman tries to become the Ideal, only to be faced with the fact that even the ideal is somehow not enough. That her sacrifice will never be enough, that the Ideal is impossible and that the moment reality bleeds through (sometimes quite literally), it all goes horribly wrong.
The Lure will be screened on Tuesday the 25th of February as part of Women in Horror Month. Details can be found here.
