Directed by Bruce LaBruce
Written by Martin Girard and Bruce LaBruce
Starring Félix-Antoine Duval, Alexandra Petrachuk, Jillian Harris, Andreas Apergis
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
Unrated
Available in virtual cinemas and at Quad Cinema Sept 17

by Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer

Eventually, most criticism of so-called “selfie culture” starts to sound like SNL’s 2016 “High School Theatre Show” – a misguided group of teens marching across a stage, chanting, “Can I get a selfie?” to prove a convoluted point. Despite a plot that goes well beyond its Narcissus-referencing title and its Polaroid-selfie-obsessed protagonist, Bruce LaBruce’s new Saint-Narcisse is a far cry from his pioneering and provocative queercore work from the 1980s and 1990s. Instead, it’s a muddled collection of ideas, too passé to be shocking, too serious to be amusing, and too bland to be erotic. SNL did it better in four minutes and 55 seconds.

Saint-Narcisse opens promisingly enough, with a close-up on Dominic’s (Felix-Antoine Duval) crotch as he watches his clothes spin in a brown-hued laundromat that all but screams 1970s. A stilted conversation with the woman waiting with him almost immediately leads to the two of them having sex in the window of the laundromat. The slightly-better-than-porn quality of the acting works here, setting the stage for a movie that might be focused on its erotic aspects first and foremost. And the crowd that gathers around the laundromat window adds dimension to the narcissism promised in the title – it’s not only about Dominic watching himself, but the scopophilia and exhibitionism of watching and being watched. 

And though these elements continue throughout – the sexual charge of watching is more prominent than any exploration of narcissism, and the acting never gets much better – the film never returns to this mischievous and sexy tone. In fact, this whole introduction seems to be Dominic’s daydream. Instead, the rest of the film concerns self-obsessed Dominic’s discovery of a family he never knew – his mother, a lesbian witch living in the woods with a mysterious companion, and most notably, Daniel, his secret twin brother, held captive by a sadistic priest in a monastery nearby. 

The sexual attraction between Dominic and Daniel (both played by Duval) is meant to be the crux of the film – narcissism and incest, how daring! – but their interactions fall flat. Their sex scenes are a far cry from the far more erotic and disturbing Stranger by the Lake, a film that masterfully used sex to heighten the tension between desire and danger on a French nude beach. With Dominic and Daniel’s meeting and sexual relationship as the inevitable point to which Saint-Narcisse leads, their incestuous relationship proves incapable of shocking. Instead, it feels as if LaBruce is checking off a laundry list of taboo subjects – twincest, narcissism, voyeurism, sexual abuse, witchcraft, lesbians in 1950s Quebec. Are you shocked yet?

What’s most disappointing is that LaBruce clearly does have a sense of humor about the whole thing! When Dominic is held at gunpoint by his mother’s companion, his mother shows up with an even bigger gun and the music swells, still focused on her and her comically large gun, as she realizes Dominic is her son. And later, while Dominic hides in the bushes trying to observe the monk who looks just like him, the rest of the monks are all playing volleyball in their robes. And don’t get me started on the music playing in the monastery, which sounds like Enigma’s early 1990s sexy Gregorian chant remixes. Behind the camera, LaBruce is having a great time; it’s a shame that these moments aren’t more frequent. Instead, we spend too much time on a too-serious plot to get Daniel out of the clutches of the evil, St. Sebastian-obsessed priest.

Ultimately, Saint-Narcisse just isn’t as provocative as LaBruce seems to think it is. There’s no doubt that it’s a bizarre film that tackles taboo subjects, but its strange plots take conventional paths – the man who’s obsessed with his image winds up fucking his identical twin, the sadistic priest is defeated, the unconventional family lives happily ever after in their cottage in the woods. I won’t deny that it’s weird, and if it were a real-life story, it absolutely would be shocking. But as a movie, it’s been done before. Maybe not exactly like this, but certainly better.