Director Agnieszka Smoczynska knows that the concept for her film — a mermaid horror-musical — sounds unusual. She tells The Observer, “When we’d tell someone we were making a movie about mermaids, they were like, ‘What?’ And it wasn’t easy to raise money for such a project. Then we started to think about our mermaids, and we didn’t want to make them so sweet as characters, and their music wouldn’t be so sweet. One important thing to know is that, in Poland, there are no musicals. Maybe, in the ’70s, there was one musical, but there is no tradition here.”
She goes, on “We had no idea how to make a musical and, in Poland, there was nobody to tell us how to make one, either.” So Smoczynska drew inspiration from the musicals of Bob Fosse, like ALL THAT JAZZ and CABARET, and gave her characters the aspiration to come to America precisely because of the country’s rich history in song and dance: “America is the place where the musical was born, so because the mermaids sing, they want to go to the better clubs. They want to go to the kingdom of the musical.”
The film’s deft use of genre conventions creates a zany and trangressive story that still maintains Smoczynska’s national heritage while infusing it with influences from the American stage and screen.
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director
