13/08/2010

Two films in Competition, but no Best Actor Leopard. Not that anyone was counting on it (least of all himself), but the fact remains that the true star here at the Locarno International Film Festival is François Sagat, the 30-something star of gay porn. Like his straight colleague Rocco Siffredi, Sagat has moved from red lights to the intellectual limelight, which in the first days of the festival was shone on him by journalists, fans and the simply curious, giving new fest director Olivier Père the media peak of the 63rd edition.

This is the merit (or fault, for detractors) of two films that couldn’t be more different if they tried, which share nothing but the athletic adults-only star and a restriction to viewers under 18, for some scenes that, according to the catalogue, might “offend the sensibilities of some spectators”.

The two films (the second is Christophe Honoré’s Making Plans for Lena) were inaugurated by L.A. Zombie [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Bruce La Bruce, the Canadian champion of extreme queer cinema, who in recycling horror elements of his previous (and most successful) Otto; or, Up With Death People [+see also:
trailer
film profile], brings up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean the most muscular zombie (moreover alien) in history. Or maybe he’s just a schizophrenic homeless man from the City of Angels?

Either way, people around him start dropping dead through, strangely enough, through no fault of his own. On the contrary: endowed with a penis that literally resurrects the dead, our hero decides to insert it in the mangled flesh of the deceased, reanimating them. All this through to exhaustion (ours, not Sagat’s or theirs), for about 60 minutes of music and no dialogue. The latter element will have reminded some of true porn, but here the saving phallus (with a scorpion-like quill that ejaculates sepia) is the result of make-up by special effects experts Joe Castro.

The result? Some shivers during the splatter moments and a lot of laughter in the theatre. And outside as well, with edgy interpretations by some who saw in the sampling of victims a cross-section American society and who knows what else. For the interested, sex shops will soon be selling a long, hard version of the film. The version seen at Locarno should make it, if not to cinemas, then at least to traditional home videos circuits.

Sold internationally by Germany’s Wurstfilm GmbH, which also produced with Dark Alley Media and PPV Network, L.A. Zombie has been picked up for Italy by Atlantide Entertainment.

(Translated from Italian)