The Visitor
Directed by Bruce LaBruce
Written by Bruce LaBruce, Alex Babboni, Victor Fraga
Starring Bishop Black, Macklin Kowal, Amy Kingsmill, Ray Filar
Runtime: 1 hour and 41 minutes
In Theaters March 7 (NYC)/March 14 (LA)

by Kimberly L., Staff Writer

Bruce LaBruce has become synonymous with counterculture, boldness, and the subversive in contemporary Canadian filmmaking. In a climate where current filmmakers are shying away from vulgarity, he is throttling the gas and arriving unapologetically at his 2024 film The Visitor. A hardcore sexuality drives the film drawing from queer cinema masters: Pier Pasolini, John Waters, and glimpses of Kenneth Anger.

The film opens with a chilling voice over of British former Shadow Secretary of Defense Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 reading of “Rivers of Blood.” A quick history lesson, Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech largely argued for stronger borders and dissolution of antidiscrimination laws, telling the story of common man the politician spoke to earlier that week expressing his concerns that black men would eventually overthrow England and take whips to the current ruling white man–a fret Powell expected was also a concern of his audience (spoiler: not the case).

While the hellish reading churns along, the audience observes multiple standard-size suitcases wash ashore along London’s River Thames, each containing an identical statuesque black man, all portrayed by performance artist Bishop Black. They unfold themselves from the suitcase in an impossible feat of supernatural flexibility.

Our visitor the film follows arrives at the home of a wealthy eccentric family where we are introduced to The Father (Macklin Kowal), The Mother (Amy Kingsmill), The Son (Kurtis Lincoln), The Daughter (Ray Filar), and The Maid (Luca Federici). Play by play, LaBruce’s film follows each step of Teorema with color filters and occult energy of Anger films and campy nods to Waters in the costuming, hair, and makeup. If there was a similar nod to Teorema directed by Waters in the 1970s, it would have easily seen his bleach-coiffed dreamlander David Lochary in the role of The Father with Divine taking up the horny shopaholic persona of The Mother. A key difference from the source material of Teorema? Pasolini’s family was believably sheltered from The Visitor’s goal of sexual and political liberation, but there is no palpable chastity or prudishness present in LaBruce’s vision–he is possibly unable to write such a character.

The titular visitor is first met by The Maid on the lawn of the home, a common transitional point of the home in The Visitor and Teorema, a traditional place for both family activities and interactions with newcomers. The first moments within the home, the political austerity and surrealness of the intro are forgotten. The Visitor assists The Maid in preparing the family meal consisting of his urine, blood, and feces respectively, procured one by one from his body on screen like a mini cooking lesson. What ensues beyond this point at the dinner table is a clear nod to the Pope of Trash John Waters, as the family voraciously partakes in coprophagia, although unlike Water’s infamous Pink Flamingos scene between Divine and the waste of a poodle, the filth-smeared faces of LaBruce’s family were brought to us by a brownie based simulation.

The following sixty minutes are unsimulated and worth a trigger warning for implied incest and graphic sexual content. If this is a first venture into LaBruce’s Queercore canon, strap in or strap on, but be prepared. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone is so well acquainted with Pasolini beyond Salo or what they know of it. The Italian auteur’s films did not go where The Visitor goes from here. LaBruce established a name in underground filmmaking in the queer scene of Toronto. He is known for pushing limits as far as they can go, but in a world of unfettered and instant access to extreme pornography, taboos are less taboo even in the kink scene. With very little off limits in the corners of your father’s internet, the standard internet, there is not much you can see here that you cannot see online. LaBruce’s flavor of subversive cinema has always been hardcore pornography as protest with very little off limits and that may not be as potent as it once was.

Fun Fact: Unlike Sean Baker’s Academy Award-Winning Anora, LaBruce’s film had an intimacy coordinator named Lidia Ravviso and she certainly had her work cut out for her. If there is an award for intimacy coordinator on an independent film, I nominate Lidia.

Bishop Black’s presence is phenomenal, with empty, pure white eyes that stare soullessly while he ravages each member of the family, sometimes more than one at a time. The themes and “messages” of the film are literally shoved in the face of the audience as they flash one by one across the screen during each romp. Some lines are so cheeky, they feel out of place in the running theme of anticapitalism and liberation. “Eat Out the Rich” and “Incest is Best” somehow manage to read as shocking puns, but don’t pack the same punch of “Colonise the Coloniser”, “Open Borders, Open Legs” or “Vote for Sex Change.” There is a lot of sex in this film, a lot of color gels for stylized lighting, a lot of overt messaging, and the all of this is shoved between a powerful opening sequence and a cinematically rich finale giving viewers closure to each character’s lesson from The Visitor, prefaced by a speech served at their final meal together, with monologues taken line for line from Teorema expressing a release from the confines of societal expectations of the the bourgeoisie.

The takeaway of the film is too easy to miss without knowing the source material. If you have time to watch Pasolini’s Teorema, John Waters’ Desperate Living and Pink Flamingos, and LaBruce’s The Visitor, then by all means go wild, but you can skip this latest film without missing any of the message. It’s smart, stylish, and very very sticky, but LaBruce could have spared a few orgiastic minutes for character development to tell the rest of the tale in modern times. The exponential rate of its relevance is becoming increasingly more relevant in 2025 than it was at the film’s release in 2024 or Teorema’s initial debut in 1968.

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