Córki dancingu (2015) Reviews

• Excellent film, even if you don't speak Polish

  celempke2016-04-26

  This is a solidly great film. It delivers on everything it promises - beautiful, original creature effects, a real sense of menace, boobs, and a fantastic musical score - and blithely throws in a few extras, like well-developed, interesting characters, a wonderful surreality, beautiful visuals, and a legitimately new twist on a story as old as the hills. If there's any small criticism I have of this film, it's that a couple times there are characters that appear suddenly, do something, and then vanish, only to reappear later. There is no explanation of these characters, sometimes not even a name. I don't mind the lack to linear reality, but I did find myself asking questions about how these individuals fit into the greater story, and whether explanatory scenes had been cut. The only other not-positive thing I could say is that the dolphin noises are maybe a little silly. That's honestly it. I really really enjoyed this movie, and I'm so glad the Calgary Underground Film Festival showed it. It needs more publicity! In fact, I'm currently very frustrated because I can't find this movie or its soundtrack available anywhere. There's a song in the middle of the film that I'd love to listen to again, the 'Bloody Gloomy' song, and neither the clip nor the audio seem to exist online. Actually, I would love to watch the whole movie again; it's a very rich film, visually, with a lot of attention paid to little details like props and blocking and costumes. Especially as I was reading subtitles, I feel like I could gain a lot from a second viewing. I can only hope a North American distributor picks it up, as I would like to legitimately buy it and support Ms. Smoczynska. Good cinema deserves to be supported! Which brings me to my last point. This is actually my first review on IMDb, and I have to admit I'm leaving it partly out of frustration with the only other review for this film. If you don't like musicals, don't go see musicals! And if you see that a movie is classified as a musical, and you don't like musicals, and you go and see the musical anyway, PLEASE don't leave a negative review on the internet just because the MUSICAL that you CHOSE to see had MUSIC in it. That's like giving a horror movie a low score because it was scary! Come on now. You're discouraging people from going to see a perfectly good film because you don't like its genre, rather than any inherent flaw in the film itself. That's hardly fair. I hope people looking this movie up will give it a chance - it deserves much, much higher than a 3. I promise!

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• The Lure (2015)

  rockman1822017-07-18

  Not going to lie, I had no idea about this film till I saw the upcoming artwork for the release of this film on Criterion Collection. I was instantly intrigued. Mermaids? Hell yeah! I don't think I've seen anything from Polish cinema; I only really watch foreign films when there is a good amount of buzz for a film and I feel I need to see it. I have to say this film is weird and bizarre but overall I felt it was quite creative despite not always hitting the right notes (not a pun on this being a musical, I swear). The film is about two beautiful mermaids who befriend a rock band and then use their condition to become part of the group and entertain fans. Along the way one of the mermaids falls in love with a group member and longs to become a human to win his affection. The other has blood lust and is out to slash the throats and eat the hearts of men. Visually the performance scenes and the presentation of other dark scenes are done wonderfully. I thought the film had a nice mix of being a horror film, a fantastical film, and a rock opera. The music was often catchy although I wasn't sure about the lyrics at all times (since they were very literal). The film is fairly erotic and captivating mainly due to the beauties of the two leads. The film does well to bring in mermaid lore and showing them as violent even if they may look beautiful. It basically felt like a horror take of The Little Mermaid at times. My only concern is the film felt kind of imbalanced since it seemed fluid and didn't have a strong sense of accomplishing anything. Scenes just occur one into the next and seem like a progression without any real motivation. It's still a highly imaginative venture one that left an imprint, as I am sure was the intention. I'm not sure if I will pick it up on Criterion blu-ray but I am pretty pleased with the sort of outlandish nature of what was presented. 7.5/10

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• A musical with sirens, cabaret, and a plot-should be awful, but its not!

  ElectronWrangler2016-12-03

  One would think that a story of predatory mermaids taking a holiday in a seedy cabaret could only be a disaster, but the filmmakers made it work here. This is a bit of a dark movie. I wish I understood Polish, because the subtitled lyrics of the songs were clunky compared with the fine voices of the leads playing the siren sisters. Most of the musical numbers and dancing were well-choreographed, but a couple of sequences didn't quite gel. A bit less time is devoted to developing the most critical romance of the movie than it needed, which unfortunately lets a bit of air out of the ending. The visuals and effects were surprisingly good. The mermaid tails especially were well done, with details such as broken scales and scars adding chilling realism. Be warned that some parts of the movie are a bit gruesome; the critical difference between traditional mermaids and their darker cousins is made clear on several occasions. Younger children probably shouldn't watch. There are quite a few movies written around mermaids, but this is the first I have seen about sirens. Hollywood, take note-"The Lure" demonstrates that this area has a lot of dramatic potential. All in all, definitely worth a one-time watch.

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• A deranged musical that's worth giving a shot

  ReganRebecca2017-04-03

  It was hard picking a rating for the movie because the highs are so high and the lows are so low. One thing is for sure though, The Lure is definitely worth seeing, preferably on the big screen. The film starts on the banks of a dirty river where a family are singing and drinking. They encounter two young girls in the water, sirens who sing about wanting to be lifted out of the water. The family, who turn out to form a band in a sleazy cabaret, see an opportunity to use the girls for their own purposes and they soon have them performing as a sort of singing/strip tease act the highlight of which is when at the end of their song they dive into the water and their land legs transform bag into their fish tails. Let's get one thing straight: the script for The Lure isn't big on making sense. Characters drop in and out to explain exposition in a ham-handed fashion, the musical numbers are scattered infrequently throughout the movie and the English lyrics are difficult to parse and seem to have little relation to what's going on on screen. Yet somehow the movie still contains a lot of charm. First time director Agnieszka Smoczynska seems to be having a ball co-ordinating the cheap glitzy glamour of the musical numbers. Actresses Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska are great in their roles as sister sirens Silver and Gold imbuing them with innocence even when their sleazy guardians use them both sexually and financially. The movie flits with deeper themes like emotional heartbreak, sisterhood, exploitation, sex, work etc. but the script never gives more than a handful of minutes to each issue so they're never fully explored. That's too bad but at the same time if you turn your brain off and just try to enjoy the movie you're in for a wild ride like nothing you've ever seen before.

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• Very enjoyable

  bbgon2016-04-22

  I just came from a screening of this movie at the filmPolska festival in Berlin. I enjoyed it more than I expected, because the film description made me a bit apprehensive. But it turned out very good! I enjoyed the unexpected mix of comedy, drama, music, horror, fairy tale and a bit of eroticism. It also had a nice flair of the 1980s Poland. The visual part of the film is great: the mermaids are very realistic (if you can say that about a mermaid), with long and heavy fishtails, and the actresses give a great performance. Despite their prettiness, the mermaid sisters look inhuman, animalistic. Mermaids are said to sing extraordinary beautiful song to attract men (and then kill them, heh), so I think it was a difficult task to create music to reflect this. However, it worked brilliantly. I was also pleasantly surprised by the subtle eroticism which never bordered with vulgarity. (It was also great to see a love scene between two women, I didn't expect it from a Polish movie.) Great job!

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