FUGUE

From the woman who brought you deliriously unhinged cannibal mermaid musical The Lure comes something completely different: an eerie study of a woman with amnesia confronting her forgotten self.

Literally staggering out from the darkness, Alicja (an electrifying Gabriela Muskała, who also wrote the taut and expressive screenplay) has no memory and no clue to her true identity. After her plight is televised, a family who claim Alicja as their daughter, wife and mother show up to take her home. But Alicja sees them as strangers, and whatever ordeals she experienced while she was missing has eradicated the cheerful, compliant personality that they remember. As Alicja learns more about the woman she supposedly was, the more fractured her precarious sense of self becomes.

Agnieszka Smoczyńska made a splash (pun intended) with her debut feature The Lure (MIFF 2016), and The Fugue only deepens the promising potential of this resolutely maverick filmmaker. Inspired by a true story, this new work is a mysterious and allegorically feminist tale about individuality and identity, beautifully lensed by The Lure cinematographer Jacub Kijowski.

"A surprising but rewarding shift in direction … Its controlled expansiveness of tone, psychology and camera mark its helmer – invaluably aided by writer-star Gabriela Muskała – as a stylist of considerable, unpredictable finesse." – Variety