Filmcollege: Psychosexual Drama + Possession ¹⁹⁸¹

Exploring the Psychosexual Drama

In his film lecture, Hugo Emmerzael dives deep into the psychosexual drama. These are films in which desire, intimacy and sexuality both transform and destabilise the lives of characters. In these films, sexuality is not just a subject or a source of eroticism. It serves as a means to explore themes such as power, identity, jealousy and obsession. The vulnerable boundaries between love and violence are also addressed. Filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and David Cronenberg use sexuality to show what lies beneath the surface of human relationships.

Contemporary Approaches and Film Screening

Hugo also highlights contemporary approaches by directors such as Julia Ducournau, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Claire Denis. He examines how psychosexual cinema makes inner emotional states visible through the body. What happens when desire becomes inextricably linked with fear, control or loss of identity? And how can cinema turn intimacy into something strange, threatening or even monstrous? After this lecture, we will screen Possession (1981) by Andrzej Żuławski. This film provides an intense and unsettling look at a marriage that is falling apart. The boundaries between mental breakdown, sexual desire and something much more monstrous blur as a relationship descends into jealousy, paranoia and violence.