MARRIAGE IS A PRISON
Héloïse d'Argenteuil, 12th century trailblazer and philosopher, once wrote, “I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond.” Radical! She’d probably like these movies.
Season of the Witch (1972) d: George A. Romero
Swallow (2019) d: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Possession (1981) d: Andrzej Żuławski
Season of the Witch is one of George A. Romero’s lesser known films (probably because the distributor originally cut 41 minutes of content, changed the name, and marketed it as a softcore porno, which are…choices). Sadly, Romero’s original cut doesn’t exist, but what we’ve got is definitely still worth watching. The film follows unhappy housewife Joan, whose husband is – you guessed it – the worst. What’s a woman to do? Witchcraft, obviously (though you really shouldn’t go into this expecting to see much magic). For the early 70s, there are some relatively bold feminist stances here, and an overall rejection of men as the answer to suburban loneliness.
Joan had years of married life under her belt before she turned to Hell, our next housewife, Hunter, feels suffocated by domesticity (and her new socioeconomic class) almost immediately. In Swallow, as a fresh newlywed, Hunter becomes pregnant, then develops pica, the compulsion to eat non-food items (a la TLC’s “My Strange Addiction”). Haley Bennet gives a tightly wound performance of marital claustrophobia and dysmorphic anxiety, plus she swallows some seriously wild shit (a thumbtack, a battery, a saw blade…). This movie isn’t bombastic or particularly gory, but it’s a chilling study of power dynamics and self-destruction in marriage.
(As a big fan of Kier-la Janisse, I’m afraid to write anything about Possession, and I’d like to just recommend her searing semi-autobiographical work, The House of Psychotic Women. But since this is a blog, I can’t just send you off to read a whole-ass book without writing anything here, so…). Director/writer Andrzej Żuławski wrote Possession in the midst of an ugly divorce, and, yeah, you can tell. The story centers on the death of the marriage between a housewife and an international spy, but I promise you the plot is entirely incidental. Isabelle Adjani delivers what is widely considered one of greatest performances of all time (at great personal cost), and co-star Sam Neil is firing on all cylinders to complement her. Unlike the previous two movies, this film is not going for realism, it’s more like an exposed nerve, uninhibited and unhinged emotional turmoil writ large. It more than earns its reputation as a strange fever dream of disconnection, with a splash of body horror and creature-feature viscosity to boot. Just make sure you take deep breaths during the notorious subway scene.