Saint-Narcisse: Love Thyself & Thy Twin
Saint-Narcisse is set in 1972, but it has a not-so-subtle nod to selfies. Lead Dominic (Félix-Antoine Duval) is an autosexual who wanders through his city in tight leather pants, trashed and taking Polaroids of himself to give to strangers, later jerking off to his own pictures.
Talking to Forbes, Canadian director Bruce LaBruce hammers the point, “We are all Narcissus now, constantly gazing into the smartphone.” Thankfully, the film itself is far less self-serious or didactic. Narcissism isn’t treated as a generational infliction but a natural way of being and LaBruce takes it to its logical, twisted conclusion: twincest.
In Saint-Narcisse, Dominic learns his biological mother is alive and may be a witch whose younger lover may be his sister. He also, by chance, spots Daniel, his long-lost twin brother—who, by the way, is trapped in a monastery by an abusive priest who believes him to be the reincarnation of Saint Sebastian. Dominic is determined to reunite his family and find himself (it’s as ridiculous as it sounds).
After decades of straddling the boundaries of art, intentionally poor taste and porn (and often leaning into the latter, such as his last film, 2018 Cockyboys production It is Not the Pornographer That is Perverse…), LaBruce stirs together mythology, Catholic mysticism and incest for perhaps his most conventional film. Saint-Narcisse is a surprisingly touching melodrama given there’s a graphic scene where the twins, played by the same actor, fuck.
It’s rare that a subversive filmmaker remains subversive 30 years after their first film—but LaBruce continues to use sexual taboos to critique ideas of taste and homonormativity, playing everything as straight as possible to point out how twisted our artistic and social conventions are.
It doesn’t necessarily always work, but Saint-Narcisse is fascinating, funny, and at the very least, provocative with purpose. Talking ahead of Saint-Narcisse’s screening at Sydney’s Mardi Gras Film Festival, I asked LaBruce about balancing his distinct style with his biggest film budget yet, the morbid fascination with twincest as a fetish and where women fit into his films.
SS
I read that ‘Twincest’ was the working title of the film. Was the fetish the core idea that you then expanded on and how did that become Saint-Narcisse?
BLB
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I used it as just a starting point: a core idea. I did the same with Gerontophilia, a film I made about intergenerational love but starting from the point of a fetish.
[With both], there’s a sensational premise, because they're taboos and people think they're degenerate. I take it from that point and then try to see the humanity behind it or extrapolate what the actual implications behind the fetish might mean.
And to me, twincest is fun. Originally, I wanted to get real twins to play the roles and make it more pornographic. Or at least, have that taboo play out on the screen, have actual twins making out, not necessarily [anything more] explicit—but just, you know, making out would be in itself a taboo.
But then we ended up getting pretty good financial backing [by Canada public broadcaster CBC] and I wanted to make it into something broader and bigger. And it was impossible to find twins who could act and do that on screen.
And the idea of narcissism was obvious because you're dealing with loving someone who looks identical to you—a mirror image. I'd also always wanted to do a ‘lesbians living in the woods’ movie. So I added that element. In fact, I did a lot of things in this movie I've always wanted to do that I'd never done before, like a ‘character on a motorcycle’ type of quest, a demented priest and hot monks—hot skinhead monks.
[With both], there’s a sensational premise, because they're taboos and people think they're degenerate. I take it from that point and then try to see the humanity behind it or extrapolate what the actual implications behind the fetish might mean.
And to me, twincest is fun. Originally, I wanted to get real twins to play the roles and make it more pornographic. Or at least, have that taboo play out on the screen, have actual twins making out, not necessarily [anything more] explicit—but just, you know, making out would be in itself a taboo.
But then we ended up getting pretty good financial backing [by Canada public broadcaster CBC] and I wanted to make it into something broader and bigger. And it was impossible to find twins who could act and do that on screen.
And the idea of narcissism was obvious because you're dealing with loving someone who looks identical to you—a mirror image. I'd also always wanted to do a ‘lesbians living in the woods’ movie. So I added that element. In fact, I did a lot of things in this movie I've always wanted to do that I'd never done before, like a ‘character on a motorcycle’ type of quest, a demented priest and hot monks—hot skinhead monks.
"The film is really about family romance. "
SS
When you say it like that, there really is a lot going on. It doesn't feel like it when you're watching it, though—it’s quite cohesive. Did you run with the chance to throw that all in, given this was the biggest budget that you've ever had for a film?
BLB
Yeah
SS
And how else did the budget change the filmmaking process?
BLB
Well, it's a progression from what I did with Gerontophilia.
In 2012, I met a Quebecois producer and I’d never had much luck getting bigger budgets in Toronto and English speaking Canada, but the Quebecois were much more open to slightly more outlandish ideas. I was able to start getting larger budgets from government agencies with the stipulation that they would be somewhat more mainstream.
That was my intention from the beginning—to try to maintain my style of making movies and the fetishes I have, the strangeness and the queerness, to maintain that in a slightly more conventional format.
I started out making really guerrilla films, very pornographic—I still make porn movies, by the way—and mostly with non-actors. [This] was a whole new dimension for me and a steep learning curve: working with unions and professional actors and professional casting agents, all that stuff.
It was something I needed to do, because I felt like I'd really done the guerilla thing. And guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you.
In 2012, I met a Quebecois producer and I’d never had much luck getting bigger budgets in Toronto and English speaking Canada, but the Quebecois were much more open to slightly more outlandish ideas. I was able to start getting larger budgets from government agencies with the stipulation that they would be somewhat more mainstream.
That was my intention from the beginning—to try to maintain my style of making movies and the fetishes I have, the strangeness and the queerness, to maintain that in a slightly more conventional format.
I started out making really guerrilla films, very pornographic—I still make porn movies, by the way—and mostly with non-actors. [This] was a whole new dimension for me and a steep learning curve: working with unions and professional actors and professional casting agents, all that stuff.
It was something I needed to do, because I felt like I'd really done the guerilla thing. And guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you.
"Guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you."
SS
[Laughs] It’s also such a pretty film. The locations, especially the monastery and woods, are so nice.
BLB
We actually had a more spectacular monastery that we wanted to shoot at in this province called Oka, but they got wind of us. Word got out that we were making a 'pedo film', as they called it. They wanted to see the script, and of course we gave them an edited version of the script, but by that time, I think they’d googled me.
So we found this nunnery, which had been sold to the government and no film had ever been shot there. Apparently they were okay with us being ‘pedos’, or I guess they didn't find out?
But the original monastery tried to alert other people in the region not to rent [locations] to us. [Dominic’s mother] Beatrice's house, for example, is this gorgeous house that’s actually in Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, as a location, and they tried to get the owner of that to not rent it to us. But he couldn't turn down the money.
So we found this nunnery, which had been sold to the government and no film had ever been shot there. Apparently they were okay with us being ‘pedos’, or I guess they didn't find out?
But the original monastery tried to alert other people in the region not to rent [locations] to us. [Dominic’s mother] Beatrice's house, for example, is this gorgeous house that’s actually in Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, as a location, and they tried to get the owner of that to not rent it to us. But he couldn't turn down the money.
SS
I'm sure it's not the first 'cancel campaign' against you—and won't be the last.
BLB
No, and I would have been disappointed otherwise.
"My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’"
SS
Going back to twincest, it's an interesting fetish because of this real universal core to it that you touched upon earlier, this idea of narcissism.
There’s plenty of studies that say people are subconsciously attracted to people that look like them. It’s innately hardwired in us, but there is such a taboo around it and your characters don't really acknowledge that it’s frowned upon. Did you ever have a moment in the script where the characters discussed their forbidden love, and was there a reason why that didn't make it in?
There’s plenty of studies that say people are subconsciously attracted to people that look like them. It’s innately hardwired in us, but there is such a taboo around it and your characters don't really acknowledge that it’s frowned upon. Did you ever have a moment in the script where the characters discussed their forbidden love, and was there a reason why that didn't make it in?
BLB
I mean, the film is playful with the idea.
With Irene, the kind-of sister [to Daniel and Dominic], there’s this whole dance about it—they're [all] clearly attracted to each other whether or not they're brother and sister. But they weren't raised together and the taboo applies because the nuclear family has to live together.
The taboo’s in place because you have to maintain a family environment. It's a social contract that everyone has with each other.
But twincest is really the least serious taboo that you can imagine, because most people can understand why you are attracted to someone who looks identical to you.
It's almost as if, instead of masturbating, you just have a replica of yourself that you can play with. People can wrap their mind around that psychology.
There's always the idea of pregnancy and inbreeding. But with two brothers or two sisters hooking up together, there's no possibility of that. It’s less of a taboo in a way, even though there’s still a strong social taboo.
The film is really about family romance. Freud talked to this idea of family romance, which is his concept of the sexual tensions within the nuclear family that are there and undeniable.
And rather than making it shameful and something that you need that you think is grotesque, it can be acknowledged and not acted upon but still just seen as something natural.
That's the sort of dance of the movie: where are those boundaries and how far can you push those boundaries within the family?
With Irene, the kind-of sister [to Daniel and Dominic], there’s this whole dance about it—they're [all] clearly attracted to each other whether or not they're brother and sister. But they weren't raised together and the taboo applies because the nuclear family has to live together.
The taboo’s in place because you have to maintain a family environment. It's a social contract that everyone has with each other.
But twincest is really the least serious taboo that you can imagine, because most people can understand why you are attracted to someone who looks identical to you.
It's almost as if, instead of masturbating, you just have a replica of yourself that you can play with. People can wrap their mind around that psychology.
There's always the idea of pregnancy and inbreeding. But with two brothers or two sisters hooking up together, there's no possibility of that. It’s less of a taboo in a way, even though there’s still a strong social taboo.
The film is really about family romance. Freud talked to this idea of family romance, which is his concept of the sexual tensions within the nuclear family that are there and undeniable.
And rather than making it shameful and something that you need that you think is grotesque, it can be acknowledged and not acted upon but still just seen as something natural.
That's the sort of dance of the movie: where are those boundaries and how far can you push those boundaries within the family?
SS
There are two families in the film: the matriarchal, almost commune-like witches of the twins’ mother and sister, and then the patriarchal monks. And on paper, they’re both quite radical, if not disturbed, dynamics. You’ve recently focused on matrilineal societies and lesbian separatists in your films (The Misandrists and Ulrike's Brain): what is it there that you’re interested in?
BLB
Well, I've always had really strong female characters in a lot of my movies. There's a female character who always has the real wisdom or sees things more clearly, or who pontificates a lot and has a revolutionary philosophy.
That comes partly from my personal life where I had really strong female mentors when I was younger—one was a sister and one was a friend—who really shepherded me through a lot of stuff, opened my eyes and politicised me.
And also a really strong identification with female characters in cinema, which is just something that a lot of gay men [feel], living vicariously through these strong and tortured female characters.
In the case of Saint-Narcisse, Beatrice is an ‘Earth mother’ and then Father Andrew is a patriarch. You're right that they are both radical, because they're both homosexual or queer on some level. She's Wiccan, and he's more traditional, [but] we all know the Catholic church’s history of sexual exploitation, and that the lives of saints are so full of fetish and sexual torture.
Ultimately, in a weird way, they’re both narcissists. They act on their own desires without really acknowledging that it might have negative consequences on the people around them.
My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’ [Beatrice] is a flawed character, because of course anyone who is in a position of power and trying to control the world is going to end up being corrupt in some way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That comes partly from my personal life where I had really strong female mentors when I was younger—one was a sister and one was a friend—who really shepherded me through a lot of stuff, opened my eyes and politicised me.
And also a really strong identification with female characters in cinema, which is just something that a lot of gay men [feel], living vicariously through these strong and tortured female characters.
In the case of Saint-Narcisse, Beatrice is an ‘Earth mother’ and then Father Andrew is a patriarch. You're right that they are both radical, because they're both homosexual or queer on some level. She's Wiccan, and he's more traditional, [but] we all know the Catholic church’s history of sexual exploitation, and that the lives of saints are so full of fetish and sexual torture.
Ultimately, in a weird way, they’re both narcissists. They act on their own desires without really acknowledging that it might have negative consequences on the people around them.
My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’ [Beatrice] is a flawed character, because of course anyone who is in a position of power and trying to control the world is going to end up being corrupt in some way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"The trick of camp, for me, is to play it as straight as you can."
SS
These questions have been quite serious, but the film is really funny. Do you think that to talk about taboos and bigger ideas—abuse, power dynamics, corruption in the family unit, narcissism—a B-aesthetic or schlocky humor helps?
BLB
Well, that's pretty much what camp—if it’s done well—that's what it does. But the trick of camp, for me, is to play it as straight as you can.
You know, people always criticise the acting in my films, partly that's because I've often worked in foreign countries, or have actors where English isn't their first language. And I give them this like preposterously complicated dialogue. Or I work with non-actors or porn actors who I’m expecting to deliver lines convincingly.
But for [Saint-Narcisse’s] professional actors, I got them to really go off the real emotions of the characters in the scenario and, and in the editing room we cut out all the more over the top takes and really tried to make it as emotionally realistic as possible.
That really helps because then you're not signaling to the audience. You're not like ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ to the audience, and they can take something emotional from it as well. And the fact that it’s a female melodrama, and using those tropes, it affords a certain amount of distance. But it was important to me to make it one of those almost Hollywood-cinematic, emotional experiences.
You know, people always criticise the acting in my films, partly that's because I've often worked in foreign countries, or have actors where English isn't their first language. And I give them this like preposterously complicated dialogue. Or I work with non-actors or porn actors who I’m expecting to deliver lines convincingly.
But for [Saint-Narcisse’s] professional actors, I got them to really go off the real emotions of the characters in the scenario and, and in the editing room we cut out all the more over the top takes and really tried to make it as emotionally realistic as possible.
That really helps because then you're not signaling to the audience. You're not like ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ to the audience, and they can take something emotional from it as well. And the fact that it’s a female melodrama, and using those tropes, it affords a certain amount of distance. But it was important to me to make it one of those almost Hollywood-cinematic, emotional experiences.
Saint-Narcisse: Love Thyself & Thy Twin
Saint-Narcisse is set in 1972, but it has a not-so-subtle nod to selfies. Lead Dominic (Félix-Antoine Duval) is an autosexual who wanders through his city in tight leather pants, trashed and taking Polaroids of himself to give to strangers, later jerking off to his own pictures.
Talking to Forbes, Canadian director Bruce LaBruce hammers the point, “We are all Narcissus now, constantly gazing into the smartphone.” Thankfully, the film itself is far less self-serious or didactic. Narcissism isn’t treated as a generational infliction but a natural way of being and LaBruce takes it to its logical, twisted conclusion: twincest.
In Saint-Narcisse, Dominic learns his biological mother is alive and may be a witch whose younger lover may be his sister. He also, by chance, spots Daniel, his long-lost twin brother—who, by the way, is trapped in a monastery by an abusive priest who believes him to be the reincarnation of Saint Sebastian. Dominic is determined to reunite his family and find himself (it’s as ridiculous as it sounds).
After decades of straddling the boundaries of art, intentionally poor taste and porn (and often leaning into the latter, such as his last film, 2018 Cockyboys production It is Not the Pornographer That is Perverse…), LaBruce stirs together mythology, Catholic mysticism and incest for perhaps his most conventional film. Saint-Narcisse is a surprisingly touching melodrama given there’s a graphic scene where the twins, played by the same actor, fuck.
It’s rare that a subversive filmmaker remains subversive 30 years after their first film—but LaBruce continues to use sexual taboos to critique ideas of taste and homonormativity, playing everything as straight as possible to point out how twisted our artistic and social conventions are.
It doesn’t necessarily always work, but Saint-Narcisse is fascinating, funny, and at the very least, provocative with purpose. Talking ahead of Saint-Narcisse’s screening at Sydney’s Mardi Gras Film Festival, I asked LaBruce about balancing his distinct style with his biggest film budget yet, the morbid fascination with twincest as a fetish and where women fit into his films.
SS
I read that ‘Twincest’ was the working title of the film. Was the fetish the core idea that you then expanded on and how did that become Saint-Narcisse?
BLB
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I used it as just a starting point: a core idea. I did the same with Gerontophilia, a film I made about intergenerational love but starting from the point of a fetish.
[With both], there’s a sensational premise, because they're taboos and people think they're degenerate. I take it from that point and then try to see the humanity behind it or extrapolate what the actual implications behind the fetish might mean.
And to me, twincest is fun. Originally, I wanted to get real twins to play the roles and make it more pornographic. Or at least, have that taboo play out on the screen, have actual twins making out, not necessarily [anything more] explicit—but just, you know, making out would be in itself a taboo.
But then we ended up getting pretty good financial backing [by Canada public broadcaster CBC] and I wanted to make it into something broader and bigger. And it was impossible to find twins who could act and do that on screen.
And the idea of narcissism was obvious because you're dealing with loving someone who looks identical to you—a mirror image. I'd also always wanted to do a ‘lesbians living in the woods’ movie. So I added that element. In fact, I did a lot of things in this movie I've always wanted to do that I'd never done before, like a ‘character on a motorcycle’ type of quest, a demented priest and hot monks—hot skinhead monks.
[With both], there’s a sensational premise, because they're taboos and people think they're degenerate. I take it from that point and then try to see the humanity behind it or extrapolate what the actual implications behind the fetish might mean.
And to me, twincest is fun. Originally, I wanted to get real twins to play the roles and make it more pornographic. Or at least, have that taboo play out on the screen, have actual twins making out, not necessarily [anything more] explicit—but just, you know, making out would be in itself a taboo.
But then we ended up getting pretty good financial backing [by Canada public broadcaster CBC] and I wanted to make it into something broader and bigger. And it was impossible to find twins who could act and do that on screen.
And the idea of narcissism was obvious because you're dealing with loving someone who looks identical to you—a mirror image. I'd also always wanted to do a ‘lesbians living in the woods’ movie. So I added that element. In fact, I did a lot of things in this movie I've always wanted to do that I'd never done before, like a ‘character on a motorcycle’ type of quest, a demented priest and hot monks—hot skinhead monks.
"The film is really about family romance. "
SS
When you say it like that, there really is a lot going on. It doesn't feel like it when you're watching it, though—it’s quite cohesive. Did you run with the chance to throw that all in, given this was the biggest budget that you've ever had for a film?
BLB
Yeah
SS
And how else did the budget change the filmmaking process?
BLB
Well, it's a progression from what I did with Gerontophilia.
In 2012, I met a Quebecois producer and I’d never had much luck getting bigger budgets in Toronto and English speaking Canada, but the Quebecois were much more open to slightly more outlandish ideas. I was able to start getting larger budgets from government agencies with the stipulation that they would be somewhat more mainstream.
That was my intention from the beginning—to try to maintain my style of making movies and the fetishes I have, the strangeness and the queerness, to maintain that in a slightly more conventional format.
I started out making really guerrilla films, very pornographic—I still make porn movies, by the way—and mostly with non-actors. [This] was a whole new dimension for me and a steep learning curve: working with unions and professional actors and professional casting agents, all that stuff.
It was something I needed to do, because I felt like I'd really done the guerilla thing. And guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you.
In 2012, I met a Quebecois producer and I’d never had much luck getting bigger budgets in Toronto and English speaking Canada, but the Quebecois were much more open to slightly more outlandish ideas. I was able to start getting larger budgets from government agencies with the stipulation that they would be somewhat more mainstream.
That was my intention from the beginning—to try to maintain my style of making movies and the fetishes I have, the strangeness and the queerness, to maintain that in a slightly more conventional format.
I started out making really guerrilla films, very pornographic—I still make porn movies, by the way—and mostly with non-actors. [This] was a whole new dimension for me and a steep learning curve: working with unions and professional actors and professional casting agents, all that stuff.
It was something I needed to do, because I felt like I'd really done the guerilla thing. And guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you.
"Guerilla filmmaking is much easier when you're younger, because you can run faster when the cops are after you."
SS
[Laughs] It’s also such a pretty film. The locations, especially the monastery and woods, are so nice.
BLB
We actually had a more spectacular monastery that we wanted to shoot at in this province called Oka, but they got wind of us. Word got out that we were making a 'pedo film', as they called it. They wanted to see the script, and of course we gave them an edited version of the script, but by that time, I think they’d googled me.
So we found this nunnery, which had been sold to the government and no film had ever been shot there. Apparently they were okay with us being ‘pedos’, or I guess they didn't find out?
But the original monastery tried to alert other people in the region not to rent [locations] to us. [Dominic’s mother] Beatrice's house, for example, is this gorgeous house that’s actually in Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, as a location, and they tried to get the owner of that to not rent it to us. But he couldn't turn down the money.
So we found this nunnery, which had been sold to the government and no film had ever been shot there. Apparently they were okay with us being ‘pedos’, or I guess they didn't find out?
But the original monastery tried to alert other people in the region not to rent [locations] to us. [Dominic’s mother] Beatrice's house, for example, is this gorgeous house that’s actually in Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, as a location, and they tried to get the owner of that to not rent it to us. But he couldn't turn down the money.
SS
I'm sure it's not the first 'cancel campaign' against you—and won't be the last.
BLB
No, and I would have been disappointed otherwise.
"My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’"
SS
Going back to twincest, it's an interesting fetish because of this real universal core to it that you touched upon earlier, this idea of narcissism.
There’s plenty of studies that say people are subconsciously attracted to people that look like them. It’s innately hardwired in us, but there is such a taboo around it and your characters don't really acknowledge that it’s frowned upon. Did you ever have a moment in the script where the characters discussed their forbidden love, and was there a reason why that didn't make it in?
There’s plenty of studies that say people are subconsciously attracted to people that look like them. It’s innately hardwired in us, but there is such a taboo around it and your characters don't really acknowledge that it’s frowned upon. Did you ever have a moment in the script where the characters discussed their forbidden love, and was there a reason why that didn't make it in?
BLB
I mean, the film is playful with the idea.
With Irene, the kind-of sister [to Daniel and Dominic], there’s this whole dance about it—they're [all] clearly attracted to each other whether or not they're brother and sister. But they weren't raised together and the taboo applies because the nuclear family has to live together.
The taboo’s in place because you have to maintain a family environment. It's a social contract that everyone has with each other.
But twincest is really the least serious taboo that you can imagine, because most people can understand why you are attracted to someone who looks identical to you.
It's almost as if, instead of masturbating, you just have a replica of yourself that you can play with. People can wrap their mind around that psychology.
There's always the idea of pregnancy and inbreeding. But with two brothers or two sisters hooking up together, there's no possibility of that. It’s less of a taboo in a way, even though there’s still a strong social taboo.
The film is really about family romance. Freud talked to this idea of family romance, which is his concept of the sexual tensions within the nuclear family that are there and undeniable.
And rather than making it shameful and something that you need that you think is grotesque, it can be acknowledged and not acted upon but still just seen as something natural.
That's the sort of dance of the movie: where are those boundaries and how far can you push those boundaries within the family?
With Irene, the kind-of sister [to Daniel and Dominic], there’s this whole dance about it—they're [all] clearly attracted to each other whether or not they're brother and sister. But they weren't raised together and the taboo applies because the nuclear family has to live together.
The taboo’s in place because you have to maintain a family environment. It's a social contract that everyone has with each other.
But twincest is really the least serious taboo that you can imagine, because most people can understand why you are attracted to someone who looks identical to you.
It's almost as if, instead of masturbating, you just have a replica of yourself that you can play with. People can wrap their mind around that psychology.
There's always the idea of pregnancy and inbreeding. But with two brothers or two sisters hooking up together, there's no possibility of that. It’s less of a taboo in a way, even though there’s still a strong social taboo.
The film is really about family romance. Freud talked to this idea of family romance, which is his concept of the sexual tensions within the nuclear family that are there and undeniable.
And rather than making it shameful and something that you need that you think is grotesque, it can be acknowledged and not acted upon but still just seen as something natural.
That's the sort of dance of the movie: where are those boundaries and how far can you push those boundaries within the family?
SS
There are two families in the film: the matriarchal, almost commune-like witches of the twins’ mother and sister, and then the patriarchal monks. And on paper, they’re both quite radical, if not disturbed, dynamics. You’ve recently focused on matrilineal societies and lesbian separatists in your films (The Misandrists and Ulrike's Brain): what is it there that you’re interested in?
BLB
Well, I've always had really strong female characters in a lot of my movies. There's a female character who always has the real wisdom or sees things more clearly, or who pontificates a lot and has a revolutionary philosophy.
That comes partly from my personal life where I had really strong female mentors when I was younger—one was a sister and one was a friend—who really shepherded me through a lot of stuff, opened my eyes and politicised me.
And also a really strong identification with female characters in cinema, which is just something that a lot of gay men [feel], living vicariously through these strong and tortured female characters.
In the case of Saint-Narcisse, Beatrice is an ‘Earth mother’ and then Father Andrew is a patriarch. You're right that they are both radical, because they're both homosexual or queer on some level. She's Wiccan, and he's more traditional, [but] we all know the Catholic church’s history of sexual exploitation, and that the lives of saints are so full of fetish and sexual torture.
Ultimately, in a weird way, they’re both narcissists. They act on their own desires without really acknowledging that it might have negative consequences on the people around them.
My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’ [Beatrice] is a flawed character, because of course anyone who is in a position of power and trying to control the world is going to end up being corrupt in some way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That comes partly from my personal life where I had really strong female mentors when I was younger—one was a sister and one was a friend—who really shepherded me through a lot of stuff, opened my eyes and politicised me.
And also a really strong identification with female characters in cinema, which is just something that a lot of gay men [feel], living vicariously through these strong and tortured female characters.
In the case of Saint-Narcisse, Beatrice is an ‘Earth mother’ and then Father Andrew is a patriarch. You're right that they are both radical, because they're both homosexual or queer on some level. She's Wiccan, and he's more traditional, [but] we all know the Catholic church’s history of sexual exploitation, and that the lives of saints are so full of fetish and sexual torture.
Ultimately, in a weird way, they’re both narcissists. They act on their own desires without really acknowledging that it might have negative consequences on the people around them.
My philosophy in life is like, ‘why not just let women run the world for a while because they couldn't screw it up any more than men have?’ [Beatrice] is a flawed character, because of course anyone who is in a position of power and trying to control the world is going to end up being corrupt in some way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"The trick of camp, for me, is to play it as straight as you can."
SS
These questions have been quite serious, but the film is really funny. Do you think that to talk about taboos and bigger ideas—abuse, power dynamics, corruption in the family unit, narcissism—a B-aesthetic or schlocky humor helps?
BLB
Well, that's pretty much what camp—if it’s done well—that's what it does. But the trick of camp, for me, is to play it as straight as you can.
You know, people always criticise the acting in my films, partly that's because I've often worked in foreign countries, or have actors where English isn't their first language. And I give them this like preposterously complicated dialogue. Or I work with non-actors or porn actors who I’m expecting to deliver lines convincingly.
But for [Saint-Narcisse’s] professional actors, I got them to really go off the real emotions of the characters in the scenario and, and in the editing room we cut out all the more over the top takes and really tried to make it as emotionally realistic as possible.
That really helps because then you're not signaling to the audience. You're not like ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ to the audience, and they can take something emotional from it as well. And the fact that it’s a female melodrama, and using those tropes, it affords a certain amount of distance. But it was important to me to make it one of those almost Hollywood-cinematic, emotional experiences.
You know, people always criticise the acting in my films, partly that's because I've often worked in foreign countries, or have actors where English isn't their first language. And I give them this like preposterously complicated dialogue. Or I work with non-actors or porn actors who I’m expecting to deliver lines convincingly.
But for [Saint-Narcisse’s] professional actors, I got them to really go off the real emotions of the characters in the scenario and, and in the editing room we cut out all the more over the top takes and really tried to make it as emotionally realistic as possible.
That really helps because then you're not signaling to the audience. You're not like ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ to the audience, and they can take something emotional from it as well. And the fact that it’s a female melodrama, and using those tropes, it affords a certain amount of distance. But it was important to me to make it one of those almost Hollywood-cinematic, emotional experiences.