Gothy, Goony And Gloriously Bold, 'dead Lover' Puts The Frankness Back In Frankenstein

“I want to lick your stink … I want to sensation your foulness … I want to ablution successful your rot … I want to feast successful your fetid funk.”

Have much romanticist saccharine nothings ever graced nan screen? Scripted by Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie (partners successful life and successful filmmaking), these words of seduction are euphony to nan ears of a lonely Gravedigger (Glowicki), who has been formulating a perfume to screen up her corpse-like stench. What she discovers is that nan correct 1 will emotion her precisely nan measurement she smells, learning that she’s not truthful pheromonally challenged aft all.

Glowicki’s sophomore characteristic “Dead Lover,” sometimes presented successful “Stink-O-Vision,” is 1 of those wholly singular freakouts that we tin convey Telefilm Canada for subsidizing (see also: nan Cronenberg family oeuvre, Matt Johnson’s existent “Nirvanna nan Band nan Show nan Movie” and galore more).

She co-writes, directs and stars successful this highly stylized, wonderfully DIY handmade project, beautifully designed pinch gruesomely gothic sets by accumulation designer Becca Morrin and creation head Ashley Devereux. The blend of intentional artifice paired pinch heavy emotion calls to mind different Canadian auteurs for illustration Guy Maddin and Matthew Rankin (“The Twentieth Century”), but Glowicki’s movie besides exists wrong different lineage: nan feminist Frankenstein film.

The movie opens pinch a quote from Mary Shelley: “There is thing astatine activity successful my psyche which I do not understand.” Her 1818 caller “Frankenstein: or, nan Modern Prometheus” has ever been a feminist matter (despite Guillermo del Toro’s much bro-ey adaptation), grappling pinch nan terrifying powerfulness of creating life — and really adjacent that is to death. Feminist filmmakers person drawn retired these inherent themes from nan book, nan astir caller and loudest illustration being Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” But “Dead Lover” hews person to Laura Moss’ modern aesculapian take, “birth/rebirth,” and moreover much intimately to Zelda Williams’ cute, poppy “Lisa Frankenstein,” successful which a young seamstress stitches up a reanimated boyfriend.

Our Gravedigger speaks to us, and to nan moon, astir her heart’s desire successful charming cockney rhyming slang. Her hopes are alternatively elemental and conventional: 1 existent lifelong emotion and a family. After overmuch rejection, she yet finds her Lover (Petrie) successful nan cemetery, redeeming him from a ferocious beast while he mourns his precocious opera-singer sister (Leah Doz). After nan brace consummate their fragrant lust, nan Gravedigger is fresh to settee down correct away.

In bid to make her dreams travel true, Lover travels to Europe for fertility treatments, wherever he drowns connected a ship, nan only point near of him a finger, delivered to her by fishermen. Our enterprising Gravedigger, a existent female of science, engineers a peep elixir and regenerates nan digit into a agelong tentacle that yet demands a body. What amended prime than his ain sister? But erstwhile her chaotic caller Creature (Doz) comes to life, each hellhole breaks loose, summoning nan sister’s jealous, grief-stricken Widower (Lowen Morrow) into an unfortunate emotion triangle (or square?).

Glowicki is simply a terrific filmmaker, marshaling her mini troupe to execute this unsocial project. Petrie, Doz and Morrow play aggregate roles, including a gossipy Greek chorus and nan set of merry fisherman (truly an astonishing array of Canadian accent activity connected display). Her committedness to her singular imagination ne'er wavers, but arsenic an actor, Glowicki is genuinely astonishing. Caked successful Halloween constitution and lit pinch an array of colored gels, Glowicki summons thing primal, axenic and profoundly moving astir nan lengths 1 will spell to for love, a screech from nan depths of her gut.

With a dream-pop soundtrack by U.S. Girls that would beryllium astatine location successful an section of “Twin Peaks,” “Dead Lover,” successful each its stinky, sexy, queer and grotesque glory, is 1 of nan grossest and loveliest films astir emotion I’ve ever seen. This one’s for nan horny, hopeless goth wrong each of us.