Saint-Nar­cisse

Bruce LaBruce is a direc­tor whose work often puts the vis­cer­al, ugly extremes of sex­u­al­i­ty on full dis­play. Noto­ri­ous for his punk ethos, a pro­cliv­i­ty for embrac­ing the unac­cept­able and push­ing the lim­its of dis­com­fort, he oper­ates on the coun­ter­cul­tur­al fringes of the film indus­try, always tongue-in-cheek and with an unequiv­o­cal­ly queer sen­si­bil­i­ty. And the crux of his lat­est queer­core provo­ca­tion? Two estranged iden­ti­cal broth­ers become embroiled in a blas­phe­mous web of incest, polyamory, revenge and redemption.

Saint-Nar­cisse takes us back to ​’70s Que­bec, where 22-year-old leather-clad auto­erot­ic Dominic (Félix-Antoine Duval) rides his motor­bike, takes self­ies on his Polaroid cam­era and turns him­self on just by look­ing at his own reflec­tion. After his grandmother’s pass­ing, he dis­cov­ers his moth­er Beat­rice (Tania Kon­toy­an­ni), once pre­sumed dead, is very much alive, but had been long excom­mu­ni­cat­ed. She lives as a sap­ph­ic for­est witch with her feisty lover Irene (Alexan­dra Petra­chuk) who, for rea­sons tru­ly beyond the grasp of my com­pre­hen­sion, ​“doesn’t grow old”.

Beat­rice and Irene live close to a monastery, where young monks led by a deranged Father Andrew (Andreas Aper­gis) engage in var­i­ous monk-like activ­i­ties such as skin­ny dip­ping and kiss­ing. Upon reunit­ing with his moth­er, Dominic also finds him­self face to face with the image of a monk named Daniel (also Félix-Antoine Duval), who is his estranged twin. Let the twincest schlock fest ensue.

A devo­tion to camp often war­rants a degree of self-aware­ness in order for it to work. I’m per­son­al­ly a suck­er for bizarre the­atrics, goofy ​’70s camp, and delib­er­ate­ly stilt­ed dia­logue that resem­bles the cadence of Lau­rie Ander­son. The ten­u­ous and flim­sy aes­thet­ics of Saint-Nar­cisse are so self-aware that it ends up being more dis­tract­ing than it is amus­ing. The inten­tion­al­ly clunky dia­logue goes from delight­ful, to mild­ly enter­tain­ing, to sil­ly, to bor­der­line unbear­able. At least Duval has a face straight out of a renais­sance painting.

Allu­sions to the Greek myth of Nar­cis­sus and a fetishised Saint Sebas­t­ian à la Derek Jar­man​’s Sebas­tiane are plen­ti­ful, and the charm of LaBruce’s artistry comes from the way he inter­prets and reflects cul­ture – these sculpt­ed male fig­ures are tied to ​“divin­i­ty” as much as they are to their con­tem­po­rary refram­ing as gay icons.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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