Over the course of our junket afternoon at the Royal York, many conversations about the film Karla ensued. Some journalists, predictably, were scandalized by various aspects of the film, most notably that it was made at all, and released so quickly on the heels of Homolka's release from prison last summer. That may be so, but there's really only one pertinent fact to know about this movie: For the time being, Karla is only being released in Canada, on 90 to 100 screens across the country. To date, no major distributor has stepped up to release the film in the States, or anywhere else but here. The money people don't think
Certainly, if Karla was gory enough or shocking enough - or conversely, if the scripts and performances are good enough - a story like this would definitely play in the States, so Karla's orphaned status at this date only means one thing: The movie just isn't good enough. And that's kind of amazing, considering the source material the filmmakers had to work with.
"It's a little-known fact that the publication ban did not include the videotapes... so the tapes were shown in court with the screen turned away from [the gallery] and so all the audio was entered from the court transcripts," begins Sellers. "Everything we wrote into the scenes was based on those transcripts, so that includes content that was not covered in the papers."
The story follows the relationship of Paul and Karla carefully, from the time they meet, when Karla is 18, up until and beyond their dual convictions. The story unfolds as a dialogue between an incarcerated Homolka and her psychiatrist, played by Patrick Bauchau, when she is eligible for parole and wishes to paint her side of the story.
"Karla is an enigma," says Sellers. "We leave wide open the possibility that she's an unreliable narrator... These are subtle things that may be missed by an audience not, um, using all of their faculties. It's natural for an audience to try to identify with Karla because... she is a woman, and because [Bernardo] seduces her into her actions; but we see here that she is involved, and to quite a degree, and twice the movie confronts her on the extent of her involvement. We can identify with her for a little while, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable."
In my experience, when an interview with a filmmaker breaks down into a monologue by him or her about what the audience of journalists should have gotten out of the movie, there may be an issue, as there is here, between the intentionality of the film and what has resulted on the screen.
Another issue is the casting of Prepon - though blessed with a striking (and un-Karla-like) bone structure and carriage, Ms. Prepon is no Charlize Theron in Monster, and the extent of her characterization seems to be those creepy Scarborough bangs we all remember from the Karla Homullet of yore. It's too bad, but it's almost possible to say - weird as this sounds - that Prepon does not do justice to her real-life counterpart, who is possessed of a psychology so completely strange and, to many of us, incomprehensible, that it would indeed have been illuminating to get a window into her soul. Instead, Prepon and her cheekbones drone on, sphinx-like, on the screen - and we don't learn much that is useful either for education or titillation.
Finally, there's the issue of representation - in a story like this, where the victims were underage girls and the families are still around, how much sex and violence is too much? The filmmakers, in this regard, have been measured - they have not included any content of nudity, torture or degradation and, on the record, the French and Mahaffy families have not opposed the release of the film. But in an ironic sense, the absence of the content of scenes that could have been seen as exploitative also serves to obscure for us the true horror of Bernardo's acts, and the true indefensibility of Homolka's collaboration. Instead, what we get are numerous sanitized scenes of Homolka being beaten to within an inch of her life - which I'm sure, in a Freudian sense, is a form of collective absolvement for her crimes, but comes off as a little bizarre under the circumstances of the story.
"There were limits to where we were willing to go with those scenes... we did not feel the same restraints were necessary while showing [violence against] the Karla character... but in terms of representing a 14-year-old being brutalized, we didn't feel able to not show that," say the filmmakers, who cite "predator awareness as a major motivation for the film."
All in all though, Bender seems comfortable with his decisions regarding what to show and not show, as well as everything else.
"I don't see the reactions we're getting as much different than if we were doing the press junket on, say, Hostel: I don't feel that many bad vibes, here in the room - maybe I'm just insensitive, but, you know, whatever."
Karla
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