The Lure

Plot(Spoiler Alert)

Two mermaid sisters, Golden and Silver, reveal themselves to a few musicians on shore. They become a singing hit at their club.



Blaine: Director Agnieszka Smoczynska spent her childhood around a dance club until she was twelve. Agnieszka's parents worked there and that club was like home to her. Agnieszka remembers everything that happened in that club as if it was yesterday because it was a big part of her life. Agnieszka would talk about what it was like growing up in that club with one of her school mates, Robert Bolesto, in film school and to Robert it sounded like it should be a movie. There were other students in film school, Barbara and Zuzanna, who too grew up in a club, which probably inspired them to create music because their both composers. Agnieszka thought Robert, Barbara, Zuzanna and her should collaborate together in making a film about a dance club. Robert would write the script, Agnieszka would direct and Barbara and Zuzanna would do the music. Robert wrote down a lot of the things Agnieszka experienced in the club as he was putting together the script.

Agnieszka wanted the film to take place during the 80s because that was the decade she grew up in. Agnieszka and Robert remember Poland was grayish during the 80s. They wanted the film to have color and they remembered there was this popular children’s show called “Akademia pana Kleksa” and that had a lot of color to it. So that became the inspiration for the colored look they gave the film. Two titles came to mind for this project, “The Lure” was one of them and it sounded right for this project.

Another inspiration came from “The Little Mermaid”. Mermaids would make things more interesting for “The Lure” if they were involved. “The Little Mermaid” is about a mermaid who has a crush on a human and she wants to live life as a human so she can be with him. “The Lure” would have that, only there would be two mermaids and one them would have a crush on a human, while they other one would fool around and eat man flesh. Agnieszka wanted to use mermaids because they hardly get used anymore. She feels people are always going for the vampires. Agnieszka spent a lot of time studying mermaids and she found several paintings on the internet showing mermaid seducing and eating men. Agnieszka is not a fan of the horror genre, she didn’t want things to be gory when the mermaid characters lure in men so they can eat them.

The mermaids, Golden and Silver, are sisters, but their personalities are different from each other. Also Golden feels like the dark half, while Silver is the lighter one. The mermaids can walk on land and transform their mermaid tails into legs. There’s just one catch and that is there is no holes on the bottom half. They can communicate with each other telepathically whenever they want to have a private conversation. At the beginning of the film, Golden and Silver are just trying to lure the men playing music on shore in so they can eat them, but Wokalistka Krysia, the lead singer of the band interrupts their hypnotic spell by screaming because they scare her at first. Then she has an idea of them singing at the club she works at after hearing them sing.

Agnieszka and Robert had it figured out for what “The Lure” would be about, but there was still more work to come. They decided “The Lure" would also be a musical and as the script was in works, Robert would work closely with the composers/songwriters, Barb and Zuzanna. Zuzanna wrote the lyrics to the songs, while Barb wrote the musical score. “The Lure” took a lot of team work. Agnieszka didn’t want to go into details on how this was going to look besides the color and the 80s style. It was important that everything from the script to the music was put together first because that way she could have a full idea on what it would look like through her vision.

Martha Mazurek had always dreamed about being a mermaid ever since she saw “The Little Mermaid” as a little girl. Martha sang a song from “The Little Mermaid” during her audition and the way she sang was beautiful. Agnieszka was convinced she had finally found her Silver after meeting with 2,000 women during the casting process. Michalina Olszanska went in to audition without caring if she got a part or not, probably because she thought it would be impossible, but she heard what the project was about and she wanted to try it out. Michalina ended up getting the part of Golden because she had what Agnieszka wanted to see in the character. Both Martha and Michalina had to move and think like animals because they were playing creatures, so they did some research on animals. They also had to work with their voices a lot sense they were going to sing.

Golden is a killing machine. She seduces men, then kills them and she does it because it’s in her nature. Golden grows concerned that Silver is forgetting her place in life. What Silver wants is to live life as a human because she falls in love with one of the musicians, Mietek, although he doesn’t look that interested. Silver is losing herself and through surgery she exchanges her tail fin for a female human’s lower half. The surgery causes Silver to lose her voice because she is not whole anymore. It disappoints me that Silver gave up both her mermaid tail and singing voice just for some boy who she wants to be more sexually active with. Not to mention Mietek ends up falling in love with someone else and marries her! So Silver did all that for nothing. I figured there must be a way to regain both her voice and tail back and the only way was for her to eat him up. Silver could have done it, but she chose love over murder. She just couldn’t do it because she has strong feelings for Mietek. She dies by dissolving into a bubbly moisture, but she dies happy by having the man she loves hold her in his arms. Golden gets seriously pissed and kills Mietek. Good for Golden because Mietek was no good. Golden makes a run for it after that it just cuts to a shot wandering around underwater. Golden managed to escape, but now she’s on her own. Golden and Silver would travel and do everything together, but now that Silver, Golden’s only family, is gone, Golden is all alone in the world.

“The Lure” was a personal project for Agnieszka Smoczynska because she put a piece of herself into the project and she and her School friends had been working on it since they were in film school.

My rating on “The Lure” is five out of five stars.





In the middle director Agnieszka Smoczynska and her two mermaids Marta Mazurek and Michelin Olszanska at the Sundance premiere