This is a real mongrel of a film and on so many levels deeply unpleasant. So why, you may ask, have I now watched it three times. I think the answer is that I am still trying to fathom what exactly is going on. To deal with the mongrel description first, this movie is a French-German production shot in English by a little seen Ukrainian-born director (Andrzej Zulawski) starring a New Zealander, a very young and thin Sam Neill, and the French actress Isabel Adjani who has barely aged in the intervening years, playing two parts.
The film is set in the still-divided Berlin and when Neill returns to his wife and son after some time away on what we are led to believe is a spy mission, one's first reaction is that this is a happy family. We then learn that Adjani has been having an affair with a philosophic zen-believer and that she is now verging on hysteria because of a newer affair. We come to learn that this is with a slimy, octopus-like creature with whom she makes violent love in pursuit of.... -- well that would be telling. She turns murderous to protect her interest, as in fact does Neill for somewhat dubious reasons. We are also treated to a very messy, symbolic scene of her miscarrying. The film may be horrific but it could never be described as a horror film -- that just doesn't cover the intensity.
In his commentary the director says that it is really a love story. Beats me.
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