A hauntingly beautiful, breathlessly romantic film about necrophilia is a tricky proposition, but that’s exactly what writer director Lynne Stopkewich delivered when she premiered her first feature Kissed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1996.
Based on a short story by Barbara Gowdy, the film concerns a young woman, Sandra (Molly Parker) who is fascinated by death. As a child she dances around the bodies of dead animals and as an adult studies biology and takes a job at a funeral home to be near the recently deceased. She studies embalming and one night makes love to one of the corpses. Sharing her secret with another student, Matt (Peter Outerbridge) they embark on a romantic relationship which leads to misunderstandings, unsatisfying sex, and finally tragedy. Kissed is filled with jaw-dropping surprises among them a squirm-inducing embalming session with Mr. Wallace (Jay Brazeau), a creepy mortician at Sandra’s funeral home. “A dream-like film...tender, poetic and oddly romantic” wrote Jonathan Romney in The Guardian, and London’s Time Out called it, “convincing, tender, and more than a little subversive.”
Kissed has been difficult to see in recent years due to inaccessible rights and a lack of suitable screening materials. Lost Reels is excited to be showing Kissed from a beautiful 35mm print with the endorsement of the rights owners. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see this extraordinarily bold, stimulating and controversial film.
