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There's nothing like a corpse in rigor mortis mode to get a girl all hot and bothered: That is, if the girl is the flawed yet fascinating heroine of the necrophilia film Kissed.
Newly opened in Toronto theatres, Kissed is the critically acclaimed sex 'n' death drama from Vancouver filmmaker Lynne Stopkewich. Another Vancouverite, actress Molly Parker, is rocketing to prominence in the lead role.
Which sounds as unlikely a success story as this country could ever muster up. But the luminous Parker is being hailed as a sexy, edgy, intelligent young starlet who, even in jaded Hollywood, is already capitalizing on her Kissed hype.
"Since the Toronto film festival (where Kissed premiered), it's just been amazing, absolutely great!" enthuses the 24-year-old actress, who is now moving from her home town to Toronto because of a burgeoning relationship. Parker is reluctant to provide details, but she calls it "sanity!"
On the strength of Kissed, Fox Television gave her the lead in a four-hour miniseries called Intensity, a thriller about a serial killer due to air in November. She just wrapped Twitch City, a six-part limited TV series in Toronto for director Bruce McDonald and writer Don McKellar. She has a Los Angeles agent. She has movie offers. Life is good.
Which just shows how valuable it was to take a risk. What a risk! Parker plays the teen/young adult version of Sandra Larson (Natasha Morley is the pre-teen player), who is obsessed with death and ritual. She grows up to take it to extremes, working in a funeral parlor and mounting the corpses of men in sexual liaisons that are charged with pagan spirituality. The low-budget film (less than $1 million) has become an international cause celebre.
Yet Parker spent a mere 30 minutes reading the script before telling Stopkewich she would do the film, despite the obvious weirdness and necessary nudeness of the character, both physically and emotionally.
Parker was lured to an audition with Stopkewich by a friend, Kissed cinematographer Gregory Middleton, who was not allowed to mention necrophilia. Stopkewich and Parker bonded in an intense two-hour conversation that welded them as friends. Then Stopkewich handed over the script.
"I was totally fascinated with her," Parker says of the director. "So when I first started reading the script, I wanted it to be good because I wanted to work with her." She was not disappointed. "When I read it, it had this whole other level of poeticism in the character. That really moved me.
"What I liked is that, although her sexuality is an extreme, it is still all about a woman's own sexuality. There is no one she is 'performing' for. It's all her own secret world. There is something incredibly erotic and fascinating about a woman in charge of her own sexuality, and it's something we so rarely see in films. I knew Lynne would treat it tastefully and in a way that I would be secure and comfortable with."
What is just as fascinating is the creative discomfort that audiences feel. Necrophilia is an obvious taboo -- and should be -- yet Kissed transcends the weirdness to examine a life lived in ways we have not seen on screen before.
Stopkewich credits Parker with being brave enough to embrace that concept and help her transform Kissed from potential freak show to celebrated art film.
"Brave? Absolutely!" says Stopkewich. "She wanted to take the plunge. It wasn't really me having to push her or pull her. We grabbed each other's hand and jumped in the deep end!"