Kissed
A film by Lynne Stopkewich
With Molly Parker and Peter Outerbridge
Dendy Cinemas
Review by Sean Healy
Ooh, yuck, you say, and quite understandably — that was my reaction when I heard what this film was about necrophilia. That's right, it's a film about a young woman who likes to make love to the bodies of young, handsome dead men.
But Kissed is a very well done and (dare I say it?) almost beautiful film. It isn't what you'd expect a film about necrophilia to be like.
The main character, Sandra (Molly Parker), has a thing about death. In childhood, she's fascinated by dead animals, going searching through the woods for them and engaging in intricate and bizarre burial rituals.
As she gets older, she graduates to bigger corpses. She finds a job in a funeral home, studies embalming at college and sneaks back into work each night to make love to the bodies. Her reasons are more mystical than sexual; she speaks of "losing herself" and "crossing over".
But there's no question that Sandra is the character you sympathise with. The portrayal of her is sympathetic and sensitive. This is just who she is: obsessive, maybe, but certainly not sick. In some ways, she's an admirable character — she knows who and what she is, what she wants and needs and lives that.
The story becomes more complicated with the arrival of Matt (Peter Outerbridge), who, at this time, is still living. He finds out what Sandra is into (actually, she tells him straight out) and, just as Sandra is obsessed with her bodies, Matt becomes obsessed with her.
The tension builds as Matt struggles to come to terms with Sandra's orientation and resolves itself in a bizarre, Sleeping-Beauty-in-reverse scenario.
The film isn't without its frustrations. In spite of glimpses of Sandra's childhood, there is no satisfying (or even partial) explanation of why. This means also that her character is all but impossible to understand.
This is a very interesting film. It manages to eroticise Sandra's necrophilia, to convey it from her point of view. It therefore does actually challenge our "ooh, yuck" sentiments and our taboo about linking sex and death.
To what end? That, too, is one of the film's unanswered questions, because (apart from taboo-breaking and simple story-telling) there's not a lot more to the message. It is, however, worth seeing.