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Last year, Bruce Labruce presented at Fantaspoa what is, in his own words, the most accessible and mainstream effort he has made so far. I'm talking about Gerontophilia, a film about an 18-year-old boy with a fetish for old men. I watched it during its one and only screening at the festival and thought it was very good. The protagonist, Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie), is in the middle of a relationship with a beautiful girl of his own age when he begins working at a nursing home, taking care of the old men. It's a piece that tackles self-discovery and an honest portrait of people in love, without any explicit sex scenes (though still, and obviously, not for everybody). Director Labruce was kind enough to talk...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

In a recent MoMA retrospective, queercore pioneer Bruce Labruce cemented his reputation as a shock-and-schlock auteur whose tendency toward pornography and violence set him apart from the serious-minded New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s — an approach so left of the left that John Waters, in a 2011 documentary on Labruce called The Advocate of Fagdom, described it as "gayly incorrect." Though its imagery is tame by Labruce's standards, Gerontophilia follows his fascination with taboo sexual behavior; it concerns a relationship between a teenage boy and a much older patient at an assisted-living facility. After an embarrassing bodily response causes him to quit his lifeguard gig, angel-faced Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie) moves on to a menial job sterilizing ...

Bruce Labruce presented at Fantaspoa what is, in his own words, the most accessible and mainstream effort he has made so far. I'm talking about Gerontophilia, a film about an 18-year-old boy with a fetish for old men. I watched it last night during its one and only screening here in Porto Alegre and thought it was very good. The protagonist, Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie), is in the middle of a relationship with a beautiful girl of his own age when he begins working at a nursing home, taking care of the old men. It's a piece that tackles self-discovery and an honest portrait of people in love, without any explicit sex scenes (though still, and obviously, not for everybody). Director Labruce was kind enough to...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Gerontophilia

Written by Bruce Labruce and Daniel Allen Cox

Directed by Bruce Labruce

Canada, 2013

Gerontophilia, or the sexual preference for the elderly, is the eponymous subject of the new film by Bruce Labruce, iconoclastic Canadian director of subversive narrative porn such as The Raspberry Reich and Hustler White, among others. Given what goes on in other Labruce films, amputee sex, “terrorist chic” sex, zombie sex, etc., the subject matter of his newest didn’t necessarily alarm the way it would for nearly other living filmmaker, Lars von Trier being a potential exception. What’s surprising is how incredibly normal and unshocking the film is, especially given Labruce’s history and the subject at hand. Many critics call this his bid at mainstream, and it could be perceived as such. But if the title doesn’t scare off most audiences, a quick trip through the director’s filmography probably will. Still,...

Hometown bad boy Bruce Labruce is back at the Toronto International Film Festival with what could bedescribed as a sort of gay “Harold and Maude” (though Labruce prefers a "reverse 'Lolita'"). Set in Montreal, the film details the sexual relationship between a teenage boy (dreamy newcomer Pier-Gabriel Lajoie) and an 82 year old man (Walter Borden) that he meets while working at a nursing home. While the severely May-December romance at the film’s center certainly breaks taboos in itself, it doesn’t feature explicit sex -- a first in Labruce’s filmography. Labruce talked to Indiewire about that change of pace as well as the film itself -- which debuted Monday night and screens again Friday. So where did “Gerontophilia” come from? It was kind of a long process. I thought of the idea about three or four years ago. There was a first draft that I wasn’t really happy with.

The 38th Toronto International Film Festival has released an incredible guest list of celebrated talent from around the globe. Filmmakers expected to present their world premieres in Toronto include: Catherine Breillat, Nicole Garcia, Pawel Pawlikowski, Bertrand Tavernier, Steve McQueen, Godfrey Reggio, Denis Villeneuve, Bill Condon, Jean-Marc Vallée, John Wells, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Ayoade, Atom Egoyan, Matthew Weiner, John Carney, Jason Reitman, Jason Bateman, Yorgos Servetas, Liza Johnson, Megan Griffiths, Fernando Eimbcke, Alexey Uchitel, Johnny Ma, Biyi Bandele, Rashid Masharawi, Paul Haggis, Ron Howard, Eli Roth, Álex de la Iglesia, Bruce McDonald, Jennifer Baichwal, John Ridley, and Justin Chadwick.

The Festival also welcomes thousands of producers and other industry professionals bringing films to us.

The following filmmakers and artists are expected to attend the Toronto International Film Festival:

Ahmad Abdalla, Hany Abu-Assad, Yuval Adler, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Alexandre Aja, Bruce Alcock, Gianni Amelio, Thanos Anastopoulos, Madeline Anderson, Nimród Antal, Louise Archambault,...