It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.
Is there something to be said for the writings of the Marquis? Is there something to be said for pornography? And is there something to be said against both? I hope our film is balanced and rich enough to encourage debate and discussion.
I shot a lot of close-ups on this movie 'cause there's like a dual mystery, she's searching through her haunted past to find some truth and she's also following an external mystery where she comes to think she might be the killer.
But you know, there's always a danger nowadays that films are gonna be brought up to Canada for budget reasons. And that's something that really concerns me.
Whereas European films have traditionally been able to go into adult relationships. I think there's a huge audience in America for those kinds of films.
That's a little homage in a way to that and also to create that sort of creepy atmosphere that Hitchcock did. Vertigo was one of his great movies that was shot right here in The City and it's about a woman and the psychological twists and so forth.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
What's really interesting about that is that a lot of these words that were incendiary in their time now seem almost harmless and laughable, because they have this archaic quality.
