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★★★★
Directed by #BrianFollmer
Written by #BrianFollmer
Writer-director Brian Follmer brings a unique, atmospheric erotic drama to the screen with Little Deaths. A winner at 2023’s Canadian Cinematography Awards and MiraBanART Music and Design Festival, Follmer’s daring film boasts two outstanding performances from Kerri Romeo and Adam Leotta.
Admist the outbreak of a catastrophic pandemic and political revolution, young American couple Emily (Romeo) and David (Leotta) flee their homes to enjoy solace, companionship and ecstasy whilst the outside world is torn apart by violence and disease. When the inevitable becomes clear to them, Emily and David make the ultimate decision that will give them control of their own fates and happiness.
With its familiar story of near-apocalyptic survival, Little Deaths could easily fall into cliché and a run of standard generic troupes. However, much like Emily and David’s choice and pursuit of pleasure, Follmer takes us down a very different and often very surprising route. The result is a piece which will incite some controversey, but at the very least is compellingly fresh and original.
Here, we have very much a story about different worlds. There is the world of the relationship between Emily and David, where an instant spark quickly leads to a deeply intense physical connection between the couple. Then, there is the physical world itself which they look to escape from them but ultimately, and perhaps paradoxically, brings them closer together than ever before. Finally, there is the sensual world between Emily and David. It is here where the couple yearn to lose themselves and stay, escaping from the grim realities slowly ravaging society and which threaten to come between them.
The result is an absorbing romantic drama built around a series of intensely erotic love scenes. These surely will prove controversial for some, but one can’t overlook the courageousness of Romeo and Leotta’s performances; all their scenes together, intimately and not, are extremely authentic and the various worlds of the story crafted by Follmer are always believable and compelling. It’s also a credit to the skills of Romeo and Leotta that we completely buy into their relationship and that we’re drawn into their world with them.
Yet, for all Little Deaths’ highly charged eroticism, it is the scenes away from the bedroom which are the most effective. Most notably, there is a harrowing moment where Emily and David witness a friend perilously ill in a church, later followed up with the powerful scene where David discovers his own fate. Here, Leotta is heart-breaking. It is the film’s best scene.
As Emily, Romeo’s performance is equally impressive. As David is slowly eroded by his illness, Emily remains committed to their vow to seek ultimate pleasure. Rather than succumbing to the disease, she instigates the idyllic alternative of the couple dying whilst making love.
Consequently, the film’s final sex scene cannot fail but to be underlined by an air of irony as Emily almost ruthlessly demands her desires at the expense of the ailing David – is this an act of pure love or selfish lust? It makes for sensual yet, at the same time, uncomfortable viewing as Emily’s morality (intentional or not) sharply comes into question at this point.
It is a testament to the talents of Follmer, Romeo and Leotta that Little Deaths offers more than a string of meaningless sex scenes; there is a depth, ironic, and even haunting, quality to them. And, indeed, to Follmer’s film as a whole.
#LawrenceBennie
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