While waiting to see director Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover at its Sundance Film Festival’s Midnight showing in Salt Lake City, some filmgoers who didn’t read much about it ahead of time wondered what they were in for: comedy, horror, horror-comedy? The short description in the festival’s program might even trigger memories of the recent teen film Lisa Frankenstein.
While definitely a horror-comedy, turns out, Dead Lover isn’t what anyone expects. As Glowicki introduced it at the screening, “It starts wild and gets progressively wilder.”
It’s like a lucid dream where the imagination runs wild and inhibitions are lost. Inspiration comes from German expressionist cinema and, most noticeably, black box theater, where so much relies on strong acting. Minimalist backgrounds, over-the-top characters, all the stuff that will gross out Mom.
While Gravedigger (played by Glowicki) stinks of putrid corpses, she dreams of finding a lover. She regularly tells the moon about her feelings of loneliness. After all both are “pale white dots surrounded by nothingness.” Gravedigger even creates a perfume she hopes will help her attract a mate, but nothing seems to work until her fowl, sickening stench draws in Lover, a young dandy attending his sister’s funeral. The two share a romance until Lover sails away to seek a fertility treatment for himself to fulfill Gravedigger’s dream of starting a family. But when it seems he’s lost at sea, can Gravedigger resurrect her lost love, or will something else come from her morbid experiment?
The music, which made an impression on the audience, came from the band U.S. Girls and old wax cylinder recordings. The story was a collaborative effort between Glowicki and her small “troupe,” and that digit was about a meter long (see film for reference).
Like Gravedigger herself, Dead Lover isn’t for everyone. But the right kind of person will love it.
The film screens again at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City on Jan. 30 and the Megaplex Redstone in Park City on Feb. 1. The film isn’t available online. Click for tickets and more information.
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