Let me say that I highly I recommend going to Property blind. Don’t watch the trailer. Don’t even finish this. Check it out now on Shudder, Criterion, or Metrograph. It is also available through Kanopa or Hoopla if your library provides access. Then come back so we can talk about it in the comments. Although this is probably nothing to squeamish about.
Property is the kind of movie that can be hard to watch even if you’ve had the entire plot spoiled. After seeing it twice, listening to three different podcasts, and reading several articles about it, I’m still not 100 percent sure what happened at various points in the movie. I just know I loved it.
You are immediately drawn into the story of a crumbling marriage against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall. It’s a formidable metaphor for the split between the stars – the very young and disarmingly handsome Sam Neill (Mark) and Isabelle Adjani (Anna), who delivers one of the most singular and edgy performances in cinema history. Watching Adjani on screen is exhausting — she bounces between disconcerting detachment and high-octane delirium with alarming ease and speed. It’s the kind of performance that, when you hear that it basically gave Adjani PTSD, you’re not surprised.
The third standout performance comes from Heinz Bennent, who plays Heinrich, the man Mark believes Anna is leaving. He moves through every scene like a drunken ballet dancer, and there’s something almost Wiseau-esque about his delivery. (It certainly doesn’t help that he keeps repeating Mark’s name.) In a more grounded film, the way he burst through the frame would have seemed absurd. But in an abstract nightmare PropertyBennent sits perfectly, rolling over, alternately attacking Mark and coming to him.
Director Andrzej Żuławski not only convinces his stars of amazingly relaxed acting performances, but also constructs dramatic images. Mark and Ana are sitting on a corner bench facing each other in a cafe, discussing the terms of their separation. (Mark throws chairs and tables in a frenzy for ages before tearing through the cafe.) Sam Neill violently tosses a rocking chair back and forth as the focus expertly watches him. The movie is simply beautiful.
That is, until it isn’t.
What begins as a bad road trip about a failing marriage turns into nauseating body horror in its back half. It turns out that Anna is not leaving Mark for Heinrich. In reality, Heinrich is just as desperate to win Anna back, to find her and make her his. Instead, she’s struck by what Anna Bogutskaya (host of The Final Girls podcast and author of Feeding the Monster) calls a “Lovecraftian fucking monster.”
It’s a grotesque of tentacles, oozing holes and mysterious humanoid features, created by Oscar-winning special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi. Foreign and AND. They feed on people. Their bodies, but also their souls. Anna seems to think it is some kind of deity, something holy. She uses it to explore parts of herself that she suppressed or lost in her relationship with Mark.
The other men in her life can’t satisfy her, so she creates an ideal lover. What starts out as a slimy creature, not unlike a baby z Eraserheadhe eventually becomes Mark’s doppelgänger.
And then there’s the subway scene. If you’ve never heard of it Property before it’s probably because of this scene. Adjani screams around the abandoned tunnel, snarling, screaming, writhing in convulsions before blood spills onto the wet concrete floor and god knows what. As a viewer, I feel exhausted after watching. It’s three of the most intense minutes ever put on celluloid, and even if the rest of the movie was terrible, Property this scene alone would make it worth watching.
There are so many different readings of this film. I’m still not quite sure what happens at the end. Did their son Bob drown? Is Mark’s Doppelganger the Antichrist? Is Helena also a double? (I think so.) What’s the deal with Heinrich’s mother? Is Anna possessed? Or is the titular ownership of the men in her life trying to assert her ownership?
In the month since I first saw this movie, I have told everyone I know about it. I can’t stop thinking about it or talking about it.