(Credits: Far Out / Gaumont Distribution)
Sun 14 September 2025 9:00, UK
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 – convulsing, howling, possessed – is a defining encapsulation of feminine rage.
The scene is from Possession, Andrzej Żuławski’s harrowing divorce horror (which makes Marriage Story look like child’s 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’t 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.
While the scene appears to be a miscarriage, which Anna explains to Mark, with whom she is embroiled in a violent separation, it’s also symbolic of her complete loss of control. Here, she acts under the influence of pure madness and chaos – not long before this scene, Anna had committed several murders following the discovery of her mysterious tentacled creature that she keeps in another apartment.
There’s a lot to take in when you’re watching Possession, it’s tiring, anxiety-inducing, and blood-pressure-spiking (and that’s just the subway sequence). Endless arguments devolve into violence and death; the unhappiness of Anna and Mark’s marriage becomes this brutal ball of fury and pain which affects everyone who comes near them.
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’s Body are cut to music, their rage receiving countless ‘likes’.
You’re 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’s something so insanely visceral about the sequence that makes it a defining example of female rage in cinema. Even those who haven’t seen the film still seem to connect strongly with the sequence, and many chronically online teenagers without any prior knowledge of ‘80s art films are now able to recognise the unforgettable scene and identify the movie.
While a film like Possession is an odd one to become so well-known on an app made for young people, it’s no surprise that clips of Adjani (notice it’s never Sam Neill’s Mark) have become a form of virtual currency, a signifier of ‘relatable’ female rage. Can teenage girls relate to Anna in the film? Probably not, but at the core of this scene’s 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.
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…the list goes on and on and on.
Possession features such a confrontational level of female rage that even when these scenes are removed from the film’s 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’s performance is a masterclass in letting go of one’s inhibitions – she completely surrendered to the requirements of the role, resulting in a depiction of female anger and pain quite like nothing that had ever been seen before.
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