Director Andrzej Zulawski’s adaptation of Manuela Gretkowska’s controversial screenplay reaches new extremes in the depiction of brutality, explicit sex, and passion as it tells the story of an anthropology professor Michal’s (Boguslaw Linda) growing obsession with a mummified shaman; spirituality; and the enigmatic, sexually voracious, violently disturbed beauty known only as “The Italian” (Iwona Petry). Along with very explicit erotic scenes, the film contains Zulawski’s usual deliberate assaults on conventional morality, Catholicism, and Polish censorship — any of which may offend certain viewers.
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This intensely erotic drama is bizarre and intriguing. A preserved shaman is found at an archaeological dig in a city, and the archaeologist in charge falls for a woman to whom he has arranged an apartment for. The relationship becomes an intense study of obsession and sexual conflict, and nothing is remotely normal or sane again.
The female lead, called only the Italian, seems to stalk the archaeologist in-between odd jobs and random encounters. She helps him when he must go confront a loss in the family; he leaves his wife for her. But there’s never a sense of a real romantic connection. While there is some humanity between them, it is mostly just a long dominance competition.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the shaman’s body is a psychedelic experience that interweaves itself with the main plot in such a way that eventually connects in the most gruesome manner possible.
