we've been reviewed by melbourne film critics at screen machine for our screening at sydney underground film festival this past weekend. very honoured to be one of the three films to be featured for the day. thank you whitney, i was very nervous when i realised that we'd been reviewed & during the public Q & A i felt inarticulate and was almost falling off the stage from sleep deprivation having to immediately run off to finish another film to premiere the following night for our art exhibition [tomorrow's blog]. reviews are daunting at the best of times.
Hybristo Honeymooners (Victoria Waghorn, Australia)
Love is pain. Especially in hell.
Created in a mere 48 hours (with cast doubling as crew), Victoria Waghorn’s latest film Hybristo Honeymooners questions whether serial killers should be exempt from wedded bliss. Ultimately interrogating the idea of hybristophilia- being sexually aroused by people who have committed violent and/or gruesome crimes – the film opens in typical cliché wedding-film style with a shot of a car; its bumper declares ‘JUST MARRIED’.
The twist: these newlyweds are psychopaths. The husband goes into a fit of ecstasy as he sniffs WD-40 before his murderous rampage. The wife, whose rapture is initially misread as fear, gets similar kicks out of being chained up as she waits for him. Their marriage is not consummated with sex as we might suspect, but with the violent murder of a ‘slant eyed’ woman. Through these variations on the idea of wedded bliss Waghorn’s film depicts a literal threat to normative heterosexual marriage.
The most arresting scene: A fairy winged bride masturbating to the sounds of her husband murdering their kidnapped victim. A sheep skull rests on her chest; its hollow eyes return the gaze of the audience. The woman climaxes, the film ends. This film is beautifully perverse.
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