Great art provokes a reaction, and few filmmakers excel in getting their audiences to react quite like the unapologetically queer Bruce LaBruce. His latest film, The Visitor, is now in U.S. cinemas, following its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival last year. It’s a bold rejection of fascism and the ultra-rich in the way that only LaBruce could make it: chock-full of social transgression, including unsimulated sex and incest.
Art can shock and titillate, repulse and delight, confuse and amaze—and all those feelings rush through you while watching his latest film The Visitor. It’s two big middle fingers up at contemporary society, exposing the hypocrisy of the ruling class; given how it’s likely the most sexually explicit movie you’ll ever see in a cinema, perhaps “two erect penises” are more accurate.
Based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, The Visitor follows a mysterious refugee (Bishop Black) who emerges on the shores of the River Thames in London. Walking through the streets of London—set to the sounds of a highly racist and xenophobic radio presenter ranting about the terror of refugees—he eventually finds himself at the door of an exceptionally wealthy family.
The family, in need of help around the house, hires him. The Father (Macklin Kowal), Mother (Amy Kingsmill), Son (Kurtis Lincoln), and Daughter (Ray Filar) all find themselves wildly attracted to the visitor, who seduces them one by one in a cavalcade of extremely graphic sex scenes. That shouldn’t be too shocking, given that the London premiere of the film was followed by a sex party. (It must be said that everyone in The Visitor, despite youthful character names like “The Son” and “The Daughter,” is an adult).
Dialogue is extremely limited in The Visitor, and the sex scenes (which take up a solid percentage of the film) have no spoken words—but plenty of moaning and groaning. Instead, there’s throbbing techno music and many well-timed slogans appear on screen, striking a splendid balance of shock, politics, and comedy, twisting familiar slogans and giving them a sexual edge. Case in point: When the Visitor performs cunnilingus on the Mother, “Open Borders, Open Legs” appears on-screen in big capital letters.
Once the Visitor has bedded everyone in the ultra-rich family, people who preach for closed borders while relishing every second with a refugee, LaBruce pushes the shock factor to the max with incest. In a dark room bathed in an ominous red light, the Daughter watches while the Visitor licks the father’s toes before bringing him closer for an intense make-out session. As they grind against each other, the Visitor turns back to the Daughter, as if to invite her into the fray. When they begin to have penetrative sex (“Invade my A--” blares the onscreen text), the Daughter begins to pleasure herself, watching from a distance.
When the Daughter joins in, “Oedipal Imbroglio” flashes up, and that’s perhaps the best way to describe what you’re seeing—a sweaty, confusing, and unwanted heap of flesh. When the Daughter and father start to kiss in close-up, “Family Values” explodes onto the image, exposing the bitter irony of those who preach those supposed values on the street while degrading those beliefs behind closed doors.
It gets filthier, all shot in mucus-dripping close-ups, yet unlike previous sex scenes, the political messaging strips the incest of any arousal, exposing it as class critique rather than an attempt to get the viewer’s heart racing. By bringing the family together in such a physical and taboo manner, he disintegrates the idea of the traditional family unit.
But that’s not all—it never is with LaBruce. In the next scene, the Son sneaks into the bedroom of the Visitor and begins to fellate him. It’s another dark room bathed in a blue light (blue is for boys, dont’cha know). Things start to get hot and heavy, and before long, the Father enters the room, watching the Visitor have sex with his Son. (Tellingly, in a likely knock on the patriarchy, the Father has sex with the Son and Daughter, but not his wife).
The father undresses, staring at them with a mix of horror and ecstasy. He doesn’t hesitate to get in on the action, and the moment he starts kissing the Son, “Join the New Sexual World Order” leaps onto the screen. When the father then does the unthinkable to the Son, “Incest Is Best” appears, provoking laughter rather than heated collars.
It’s explicit, yes, but it’s also a visceral critique of how the ruling classes preach one thing in public and do the opposite behind the curtain, giving with one hand and taking with another. LaBruce’s inspiration Pasolini also used controversial sex scenes to create pointed critiques of fascism. In his notorious Salò—possibly the single most argued-over film ever—the fascists employ their power by putting teenagers through unthinkable acts of sadism to expose the emptiness and vacant morality of fascism. Similarly, The Visitor uses intimate sex scenes including incest to expose the hollowness of the rich while mocking their politics.
Cinema can highlight our fears by holding a mirror to society, however demented. The Visitor takes something as taboo as incest and instead of placing shame around it, uses it to attack the ruling class and the creeping rise of fascism across the globe. It’s disgusting, it’s slimy, it’s provocative, it’s disturbing, it’s political—and there’s nothing else quite like it.
