“Possession,” February 16

Friday, February 16, 7 p.m.

Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL

With Variety magazine stating, in a prescient 1981 review, that its "mass of symbols and unbridled, brilliant directing meld this disparate tale into a film that could get cult following on its many levels of symbolism and exploitation," Polish writer/director Andrzej Żuławski's classic Possession will be screened at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox venue on February 16, Rolling Stone's David Fear also lauding the excitingly edgy work as "a body-horror answer to Kramer vs. Kramer."

Żuławski's only English-language film over a career that found the artist helming more than a dozen feature-length works, Possession is his 1981 psychological-horror drama (co-written by Frederic Tuten) that obliquely follows the relationship between an international spy (Sam Neill) and his wife (Isabelle Adjani), the latter of whom begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking for a divorce. An international co-production between France and West Germany filmed in West Berlin, Possession premiered at the 34th Cannes Film Festival, where Adjani (a two-time Academy Award nominee as Best Actress for The Story of Adele H. and Camille Claudel) won the Best Actress award. The screenplay was written during the painful divorce of Żuławski from actress Malgorzata Braunek, and while not commercially successful either in Europe or in the United States, with the latter only receiving a heavily edited cut on its initial release, the film eventually acquired cult status and has been more positively appraised in later years.

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86 percent of current reviews are positive for Żuławski's achievement, and with the average rating i8.1 out of 10, its Web-site consensus reads, "Blending genres as effectively as it subverts expectations, Possession uses powerful acting and disquieting imagery to grapple with complex themes." The film is included in Sight & Sound's "The Greatest Films of All Time" list, with the magazine's Michael Brooke stating in 2011, "Although it's easy to see why it was pigeonholed as a horror film, its first half presents what is still one of the most viscerally vivid portraits of a disintegrating relationship yet committed to film, comfortably rivalling Lars von Trier's Antichrist, David Cronenberg's The Brood, and Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage." Michael Dodd of Bring the Noise was similarly impressed with what he called "an intense exploration of marital breakdown," arguing that this made Possession "one of the few horror films that successfully builds a back story for its main characters.”

Possession will be screened in Rock Island on February 16, admission to the 7 p.m. ages-17-plus showing is free, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.