Moive: Saint-Narcisse
Released: 2020
Every now and then, you come across a bizarre movie that’s so weird you can only shake your head in disbelief and wonder how this film even got made. But you also feel compelled to continue watching to the end, just to see just how much weirder it could possibly get!
This B-grade gay movie by Canadian artist turned filmmaker Bruce LaBruce definitely falls into this category.
The setting
The film is set in 1972 Quebec and opens with a close up of the crotch of Dominic (played by Felix-Antoine Duval). It’s an indication of the crazy things to come as he waits for his load of laundry to be done at a laundromat. The other customer at the laundromat asks him about the female undergarments she sees him fishing out from his completed load of laundry and Dominic claims they are his grandmother’s, because she isn’t well or she would have done it by herself.
Meet the weird extended family
The story unfolds after the death of his grandmother, and when the self-obsessed Dominic—who has a penchant for taking random selfies of himself with polaroid camera, which would have been significant back in 1972—finds a letter from his presumed-dead mother amongst grandma’s posessions.
At the town near his mother’s hideout, Dominic had noticed someone that looks like him in amongst a group of monks. So he decides to stalk them at their monastery and is shocked to see through his binoculars what looks like his doppelgänger staring back at him. There’s more spying of this virile group of monks having fun together with lots of gratuitous nudity on display while they all swim in the pond during a recreational break.
And then Dominic comes face to face with his identical twin brother Daniel.
Is it incest or twincest?
In keeping with the titular narcissistic theme of the movie, the brothers make love with their own image (hmm, is it a shocking case of incest or twincest?) and then we learn that Daniel is Dominic’s twin brother whom he was separated from and raised separately in the monastery. Daniel has become the restless and disobedient prey of a perverted senior priest. Father Andrew is obsessed with Daniel, whom he fancies in the image of Saint Sebastian (yes, their are some gratuitous piercings to follow), and the perverted priest makes him perform sexual acts to appease this fantasy.
Daniel tells Dominic about this and the latter disapproves of this immorality and declares the senior priest a beast. When Daniel asks if what he’s been subjected to is worse than the sinful act they’ve just performed, we find ourselves laughing out loud when Dominic replies “no, we are family”!