For “Sacred Creatures” director Frieda Luk, belief can be comforting, ridiculous, exhilarating and hard to explain. It goes viral.” That fascination drives Luk’s debut feature, which world premieres in competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Starring Olivia Luccardi, James Cusati-Moyer and Romina D’Ugo, the Canada-Italy production follows three estranged siblings reuniting in rural Italy after middle sister Miriam (Olivia Luccardi) is released from psychiatric treatment following an experience she understands as a spiritual awakening rather than a breakdown.
She knows herself and she makes choices. However, when she becomes a figure that people rally around, people are imbuing her with meaning. When she becomes abstract, she no longer controls the message.” That uncertainty extends to the film itself, which slips between psychological drama, comedy and magical realism without settling comfortably into any of them.
For Luk, the tonal slipperiness developed naturally from writing. What I’m waiting for is how they surprise me,” she says. One influence was Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe,” the grotesque story of four men attempting to eat themselves to death.
It never takes itself too seriously.” Italian cinema was integral to “Sacred Creatures” from the start. Luk points to films of the 1970s, admiring their willingness to move between modes contemporary cinema can sometimes keep separate. No, I actually don’t want you to touch me.
I want to be a pet, but not like that,’” laughs Luccardi. As Miriam grows more secure in herself, Luccardi subtly changed the physical quality of the performance. Before, she may have been a little more stressed and tightly wound.” That growing self-possession becomes visual in the film’s party scene, where Miriam arrives in a voluminous yellow-green dress that immediately separates her from the room around her.
There is something of Bette Davis’ party entrance in “All About Eve” to the moment: costume becomes a declaration of presence, allowing Miriam to suddenly occupy a different plane from everyone watching her. Luk wanted the dress to be “kind of ridiculous looking, but also kind of chic,” something that would “take up some space” without seeming entirely out of place. At the end… I wore it a long time,” she jokes.
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