Dead Lover

Writer-director Grace Glowicki stars as a wily gravedigger whose stench has left her bereft of amorous suitors. That is, until a horny dandy (co-writer Ben Petrie) with a penchant for her fetid funk enters this vibrantly chiaroscuro picture. The two consummate their love, but when a misbegotten voyage reduces the gravedigger’s lover to a mere severed finger, she feverishly turns to unnatural sciences to concoct a means of literally resurrecting the relationship. And if you know your Mary Shelley, you know that such Promethean malpractice can only go so right, before going so very wrong.

From Sundance to Rotterdam, Glowicki’s wonderfully wackadoo Dead Lover has enjoyed a robust film festival run as one of the year’s most quintessential midnight movie experiences. Concocted from a delightfully campy witches’ brew of influences, from British pantomime to German Expressionism, this madcap gothic comedy wears its bleeding, beating heart on the pointy end of its proverbial shovel as it volleys a cavalcade of impish slapstick and DayGlo splatter upon a romantic parable of love conquering over petty inconveniences like body odour, impotency, and rigor mortis.

Dead Lover is vividly photographed on 16mm by Rhayne Vermette — also at the Festival with her film Levers — within Becca Brooks Morrin’s handcrafted theatrical sets. These are endearingly enlivened by a small but dexterous cast of a mere four players (including Leah Doz and Lowen Morrow) juggling a dozen roles, making Dead Lover one of the great Canadian phantasmagorias following Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century. This is a magnificent monument to the brilliant ingenuity of Glowlicki and Petrie’s continued partnership… ’til death (and beyond) do they part. (The pair are also at the Festival starring in Honey Bunch.)

PETER KUPLOWSKY