Director: Addison Heimann
Stars: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris
Olivia Taylor Dudley, I had no idea of your game. At the top of Addison Heimann’s Lovecraftian throuple comedy, Joey (Dudley) is in session with her therapist. Heimann holds the camera on her as she unspools a story from her recent past in which she met and slept with an alien from another planet. And we hold on this, pushing ever-closer, for the better part of eight minutes. It’s a highfalutin monologue, one of elaborate detail, range, humour and feeling, and the rest of the movie still awaits us. Mia Goth, eat your heart out.
Following the queer malaise of his furrowed feature debut Hypochondriac, Heimann changes tack somewhat here for this gorgeously overripe offering (which has coiled onto Shudder or which you can nab on Blu-Ray in the UK in a double-disc set with said debut via Lightblub Film Distribution). It’s a deeply horny, tentacle porn-y switch-up to shady irreverence with a garishness that requests a certain disposition to appreciate it. But if you’re not feeling it, frankly, it’s your loss.
Joey and her gay best friend Craig (Jordan Gavaris) are queasily codependent. They share an apartment, drink red from the bottle, they’re broke and neither are inclined to work to remedy this. Their priorities are of the trivial variety that form the basis of stand-up routines that ridicule millennials and Gen-Zers. Heimann’s material is funny, though. Barbed, catty, eminently quotable (“shall we have cross-species intercourse?”) and imbued with warmth toward his focal pair in spite of how freely he intemises their (many, many) shortcomings.
As ridiculous as Joey’s opening monologue is, it is delivered with a passion and conviction that sells the even stranger, sillier movie that follows it. A movie about the pair’s mutual attraction to said alien; a tracksuit wearing conservationist (and narcissist) named… Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci, groomed hilariously into a facsimile of Jared Leto)… who invites them to his spacious Californian mansion just as they’re hitting dire financial straits. Pucci is clearly having a blast in a role that sends up the state’s influencer guru types while also allowing him to flex (literally) his hard-sculpted physique. Brian appears human for the most part, but in sexual union loosens up into a more be-tentacled monstrosity. He’s also allergic to sugar-free lemonade powder and is perennially waited on by crotchety housemaid and former cult member Laura (Marlene Forte).
Heimann’s approach here is defiantly tongue-in cheek and refreshingly playful after the dour tendencies of Hypochondriac. Touch Me resplendently goes somewhere over the rainbow when it comes to expressing sexual ecstasy, while the filmstock has a thick, warm grain to it that blends handsomely with his penchant for blushing fuchsias and ripe orange tones or even occasional cold neons. The sprinkling of digital effects on top of this effectively transport us into a specific and heady microclimate of Heimann’s making. A druggy delirium where time is loose and the only urgencies are sexual.
The film veers wildly between comedy and horror, often using the former to blindside us with the latter. Characters have a habit of throwing away deeply traumatic revelations like they’re punchlines. Tales of abuse or loss are frequent but self-deprecating. The ways in which he minimise ourselves, while simultaneously living in our pasts. Heimann may be operating at a comedically heightened level, but he’s also here to celebrate sex and bodies. His sexual fantasies – whether queer, straight or bestial – are psychedelic reveries. The most acutely realised of their kind this side of Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, or Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet. He powers us over the rainbow like David Lynch did with Wild at Heart.
Sex is funny. It’s weird and embarrassing sometimes and great with a trusting companion. Touch Me relishes these truths but also tumbles into the darker avenues of abuse and manipulation that can occur, too. Throwing off all seriousness with gloopy alien puppets and tactile practical effects doesn’t mask the points being expressed behind them. And then there are the wildcards of the human (and yeah, sure, alien) psyche, co-mingling sex and possessiveness to toxic degrees, rendered here as inevitable entropy leading to psychotic, offbeat violence. As usual our inherent selfishness is our own undoing. We want our treats all the time – perhaps a comment on generational lapses in discipline?
A black and white flashback wedged into the middle of the movie feels like an hilarious send-up of the self-serious variety frequently utilised by Tarantino, particularly when Heimann persists in undercutting the drama with irreverent intertitles. But the sequence also shows an artist flexing his creative ambitions, eager to make his work feel richer and more dynamic. See also affectations like split-screen. The efforts are appreciable.
More broadly and simply speaking, this offering is a hoot. Everyone’s having a blast. Forte is channelling Susan Sarandon realness. Pucci and Gavaris are acclimated to just the right levels of camp. And then there’s Dudley giving career-best work as evidenced in that opening monologue and beyond.
It’s been hot out lately. Now, thanks to Heimann and co., it’s hot at home, too. And deeply, bodily enjoyable.
The Lost Highway Hotel 