When it comes to boundary-pushing cinema, few directors go as far into provocative territory as Bruce LaBruce. Known for graphic depictions of sexuality and taboo topics, he has built a reputation among fans and critics for gleefully thumbing his nose at conservatism. His films revel in making people uncomfortable, using sex and violence as weapons against societal norms.
In his latest effort, The Visitor, LaBruce puts his signature spin on a classic of envelope-pushing queer cinema: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema. Released in 1968, Teorema was scandalous in its day for centering on a mysterious visitor who seduces members of a wealthy family, leading to their downfall. Ever the provocateur, LaBruce amps up the explicitness in his loose adaptation. Through raw sensuality and irreverent humor, he explores issues of immigration and class dynamics while bringing his anarchic punk sensibility to Pasolini’s radical legacy.
Strap in for a wild, confrontational journey that spares no taboo. LaBruce invites audiences to leave their inhibitions at the door and open their minds to his particular brand of sexual liberation. Love it or hate it, The Visitor will get under your skin.
A Mysterious Arrival Upends a Family
The Visitor opens with a striking image: a naked Black man emerging from a suitcase on the banks of London’s River Thames. He is one of several identical men mysteriously washing up on shore inside luggage, like refugees arriving on a new land. After stealing clothes from a nearby homeless encampment, this particular visitor catches the eye of a maid working for an affluent white family. She takes him in as a favor, little realizing the chaos his presence will soon unleash.
Though initially introduced as the maid’s nephew, the Visitor quickly makes himself indispensable to the family. His rugged magnetism enchants the repressed Father, bored Mother, curious Son and Daughter. What begins as an innocent guest stay soon devolves into an incestuous sexual free-for-all as the Visitor seduces each member of the household. In raunchy yet artistically shot scenes, he unleashes their pent-up desires and dismantles societal taboos.nameservers
These explicit trysts seem to spur an awakening in the family. As they embrace carnal pleasure like never before, cracks appear in the façade of upper class respectability they once maintained. When the Visitor ultimately disappears, he leaves them as hollow shells still chasing the fulfillment they briefly found in his arms. They are addicted to the liberation he embodied.
Director Bruce LaBruce employs this mysterious interloper to expose the rot beneath proper British manners and privilege. The family’s submission to taboo sexuality represents a transcendence of suffocating traditional values. They let loose the wild animals inside. But once unleashed, that beastly freedom cannot simply be caged up again.
Poking Holes in the Nuclear Family Fantasy
On the surface, The Visitor is provocation for provocation’s sake. LaBruce revels in scenes of incest, sacrilege, and coprophagia that gleefully thumb their nose at propriety. But look deeper, and the film wields its sexually explicit content to serious thematic ends.
At its heart, The Visitor is about liberation. The family’s sexual submission represents freedom from societal chains – a defiant casting off of so-called decency. Their aristocratic life was a gilded cage; the Visitor lets their true natures out. But there are hints of exploitation as well. The family finds itself addicted to the dangerous freedom the Visitor embodies. He upends their lives then disappears, leaving them unwhole.
The interloper’s mysterious arrival as a refugee also speaks to the immigrant experience. His emergence from the Thames in a suitcase while hate speech rings out highlights the dehumanization migrants often face. The family’s embrace of this racialized body demonstrates liberation across color lines – but also problematic fetishization.
The Visitor also crucifies upper class pretension. Prior to the Visitor’s arrival, the family plays the part of respectable aristocrats residing in a glass house, self-contained and superior. But he penetrates that illusion. His presence exposes the emptiness beneath their manners, shattering incest and coprophagia taboos. Beneath the surface, they are as primal and wanton as anyone.
Finally, The Visitor consciously plays with the history of queer cinema. Directors like Fassbinder, Almodóvar and Waters pushed boundaries in depicting queer lives. Pasolini’s original Teorema used transgression to explore sexual psychology. LaBruce carries this tradition to its most daring extremes. Few directors working today would even attempt something so sexually confrontational. The self-aware slogans during sex scenes link carnality to politics – weaponizing pornography as protest.
Daring, disturbing and undeniably provocative on multiple levels, The Visitor broadcasts radical ideas through imagery few directors would dare. It will leave ethical implications and shocked expressions in its wake. But those just might be markers of its success.
An Assault on the Senses
LaBruce employs an intentional low budget, trashy B-movie aesthetic for The Visitor. Shot on grimy London streets and apartments with unknown actors, it looks more like an amateur porn production than a polished drama. The camerawork feels voyeuristic, lingering on graphic detail. Combined with the muddy visual quality, this creates an ambience both seedy and surreal.
At the filmmaking craft level, two elements overwhelm the viewer: sexually explicit content and hallucinogenic visuals/sound. True to LaBruce’s mission statement, The Visitor includes scene after scene of unsimulated, penetrative sex in full view of his camera. The director films these sequences in almost clinical fashion, giving audiences an unfiltered look at the action. The effect walks a line between indictment and glorification that will leave many unsettled.
Heightening the assault on the senses, LaBruce utilizes strobe lights, saturated colors and a pounding synth soundtrack more redolent of a nightclub than cinema. He films some sex scenes in blacklight, giving bodies an otherworldly glow. The soundtrack pulses with an hypnotic beat, as if willing the viewer into a trance state fit for liberation. Messages like “No Future” flash intermittently on screen, linking taboo imagery back to punk rebellion.
None of this is designed for easy viewing. LaBruce wants to jar audiences, make them question preconceptions through a visceral cinematic experience. Movies don’t come more defiantly confrontational than The Visitor – an experiment in smashing comfort zones.
An Unfiltered Molotov Cocktail of Cinema
Like all of Bruce LaBruce’s work, The Visitor is not for the faint of heart. This loose adaptation of Pasolini’s Teorema pushes the envelope on sexuality and propriety even further than the original. LaBruce steeps his story in graphic nudity and penetration, bending incest, race play, scat and more to the service of radical politics.
The Visitor represents a kind of cinematic Molotov cocktail, intended to shock bourgeois sensibilities and question societal norms. LaBruce daringly links sexual imagery to class and immigration issues, celebrating liberation while admitting the potential for exploitation. It purposefully evokes discomfort, frustration, even disgust to provoke thought beyond surface impressions.
Clearly this kind of confrontational art won’t gel with most audiences. The graphic content is an endurance test demanding an open mind and cast iron stomach. But fans of transgressive queer cinema may find intellectual resonance beneath the raunch. LaBruce brings a punk rock ethos to timeless questions of identity and oppression.
The Visitor proudly stands apart as an accessible art film and hardbound pornography both at once. It encapsulates LaBruce’s singular talent for irreverence, his commitment to body liberation over crowd appeasement. For cinephiles craving something well outside consensus reality, that’s a quality worth celebrating. Hate it or love it, the film will leave imprints. The choice is whether to process those marks or simply scrub them away.
The Review
The Visitor
A punk rock gut-punch to bourgeois values, The Visitor is custom-made to appall pearl-clutchers and titillate free spirits. While mainstream critics may balk at LaBruce’s rawness and single-minded determination to offend, his message of sexual liberation over oppression will undoubtedly strike a chord among fans of transgressive queer cinema. Love it or despise it, The Visitor will whack you over the head and dare you to keep watching.
PROS
- Daring, boundary-pushing approach to sexuality and politics
- Striking visual style and punk rock energy
- Powerful performance by Bishop Black
- Subversive sense of dark humor
- Explores complex themes beneath the graphic content
CONS
- Extremely graphic content will turn many viewers off
- Hyper-provocative approach lacks nuance
- Amateurish look and pulp plot may frustrate
- Overlong runtime leads to repetitiveness
