Taking self-love to new heights, Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce’s zany 70s-set household affair drips with blasphemous, outrageous delights. The tongue-in-cheek opening leaps straight out of a retro softcore journal: clad in tight denims and biker jacket, hunky Dominic (Félix-Antoine Duval) discreetly eyes a mischievous younger woman on the laundromat earlier than the pair disrobe and writhe round on a desk like rabbits in warmth. As strangers collect to stare on the salacious hanky-panky, Dominic is all of the sudden snapped out of his daydream.
The scene may merely be a sticky reverie, but it surely additionally establishes how Saint-Narcisse portrays intercourse as a spectacle, a sensual but comical tableau served to titillate and amuse abruptly. With the swagger of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, Dominic hops on his bike and embarks on a street journey strung with excessive and low cultural references, as he searches for his lengthy misplaced twin. Not solely does Dominic reunite along with his lesbian witch mom – you learn that proper – however he additionally locates his brother Daniel in a monastery, the place he suffers day by day molestations from a wicked priest.
Taking part in the twin roles of Dominic and Daniel, Duval is particularly adept at navigating the movie’s advanced net of campness and sincerity; when the twins lastly meet head to head, their encounter brims with each winking lust and real pathos. Whereas the frenetic layering of the parodic, the pornographic, and the chic may depart viewers gasping for air, Saint-Narcisse is a welcome blast of subversive naughtiness, proving that a movie can sort out social taboos whereas refusing to model itself with facile markers of respectability.
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