![\"Possession](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Possession-Andrzej-Zulawski-1981-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Gaumont Distribution)<\/p>\n
Sun 14 September 2025 9:00, UK <\/p>\n
The image of Isabelle Adjani screaming in a blue dress, her shopping bags smashed against the wall, milk and eggs oozing onto the floor which she rolls around in \u2013 convulsing, howling, possessed \u2013 is a defining encapsulation of feminine rage. <\/p>\n
The scene is from Possession<\/a>, Andrzej \u017bu\u0142awski\u2019s harrowing divorce horror (which makes Marriage Story look like child\u2019s play), and in recent years, clips of Adjani as Anna have become incredibly popular online, especially among young women. The full sequence is even more harrowing, simply because the camera doesn\u2019t flinch as you watch Adjani stretching out on the cold subway floor, her dress now covered in liquids, her voice echoing across the tiled walls. Then we cut to her sitting on her knees, blood and white liquid (is it milk? Semen? Some other mysterious bodily fluid?) pouring out from between her legs and her mouth.<\/p>\n While the scene appears to be a miscarriage, which Anna explains to Mark, with whom she is embroiled in a violent separation, it\u2019s also symbolic of her complete loss of control. Here, she acts under the influence of pure madness and chaos \u2013 not long before this scene, Anna had committed several murders following the discovery of her mysterious tentacled creature that she keeps in another apartment. <\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to take in when you\u2019re watching Possession, it\u2019s tiring, anxiety-inducing, and blood-pressure-spiking (and that\u2019s just the subway sequence). Endless arguments devolve into violence and death; the unhappiness of Anna and Mark\u2019s marriage becomes this brutal ball of fury and pain<\/a> which affects everyone who comes near them. <\/p>\n Despite the themes of marital breakdown that form the basis of the film, many young women seem to find it relatable. There is a goldmine of edits of female characters screaming or splattered in blood on TikTok, where characters like Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, Pearl from the eponymous film, Annie from Hereditary, Danni from Midsommar, and Jennifer from Jennifer\u2019s Body are cut to music, their rage receiving countless \u2018likes\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019re almost always bound to find Anna screaming and thrashing in the subway in one of these videos, or perhaps Adjani smiling an unhinged smile at the camera from an earlier sequence. There\u2019s something so insanely visceral about the sequence that makes it a defining example of female rage in cinema. Even those who haven\u2019t seen the film still seem to connect strongly with the sequence, and many chronically online teenagers without any prior knowledge of \u201880s art films are now able to recognise the unforgettable scene and identify the movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n While a film like Possession is an odd one to become so well-known on an app made for young people, it\u2019s no surprise that clips of Adjani (notice it\u2019s never Sam Neill\u2019s Mark) have become a form of virtual currency, a signifier of \u2018relatable\u2019 female rage. Can teenage girls relate to Anna in the film? Probably not, but at the core of this scene\u2019s popularity is the overwhelming fact that young women today have a lot to be angry about, and no one exemplifies this feeling of uncontainable emotion quite like Adjani in Possession.\u00a0<\/p>\n Male-on-female violence, reproductive rights being taken away, inequality in the workplace and at school, casual misogyny, alarmingly high rape statistics, unrealistic beauty standards\u2026the list goes on and on and on. <\/p>\n Possession features such a confrontational level of female rage that even when these scenes are removed from the film\u2019s context, they still possess such strong meaning, because how often is it that women are depicted with such messy, raw, and abject horror on screen? Adjani\u2019s performance is a masterclass in letting go of one\u2019s inhibitions \u2013 she completely surrendered to the requirements of the role<\/a>, resulting in a depiction of female anger and pain quite like nothing that had ever been seen before.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Gaumont Distribution) Sun 14 September 2025 9:00, UK The image of Isabelle Adjani screaming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,1039,144791,9472,3943,23864,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-423861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-homepage","10":"tag-isabelle-adjani","11":"tag-movie","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-possession","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115203063746929006","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}