There’s no filmmaker operating on quite the same wavelength as Grace Glowicki. With Dead Lover, her latest feature and a standout on the festival circuit, Glowicki (who previously directed and starred in 2019’s Tito) doubles down on the singular, offbeat sensibilities that have come to define her work - melding theatrical minimalism, grotesque humor, and deeply sincere emotion into something that feels entirely her own. The film unfolds like a demented stage play brought vividly to life on celluloid, following a lonely gravedigger (played by Glowicki) whose desperate yearning for love spirals into a morbid, madcap quest to resurrect her lost partner (played by her real-life partner and creative collaborator Ben Petrie). It’s equal parts gothic romance, absurdist comedy, and tactile horror, reveling in the textures of decay while never losing sight of its beating heart.
Glowicki anchors the film with a fearless, all-in performance that captures the character’s longing, hilarious strangeness, and surprising sincerity. Drawing from her roots in black box theater, Dead Lover strips the cinematic form down to its essentials while elevating it through the richness of shooting on film, resulting in a work that feels handmade and visually striking. Even as the movie indulges in outrageous, often gleefully grotesque imagery (and, in select screenings, even incorporates “Stink-O-Vision” to immerse audiences further), Glowicki remains grounded in emotional truth. It’s that balance that makes Dead Lover such a uniquely affecting experience, and further cements Glowicki as one of the most exciting and uncompromising voices in contemporary indie cinema.
In celebration of the wide release of Dead Lover and its upcoming engagements in gag-worthy Stink-O-Vision, we talked with Glowicki about her new film and turning the scratch n' sniff experience of it into a reality.
Are there any movies that you wish that you'd been able to catch in theaters to see with an audience?
Grace Glowicki: The one that's coming to mind right now, just because I just recently watched it, is Strait-Jacket with Joan Crawford. I think that or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Either of those movies would have been really cool to see with a live audience back then, especially because of the way it was marketed. It was like, “Be warned, you're gonna see extreme content”. It was so sensational that I think it would be really cool to have been in those theaters when it was kind of breaking the mold.
What was it like to actually bring the vision of presenting this film in Stink-o-Vision to life?
Grace Glowicki: It was so interesting. When the distributors decided we're going to do this, it then became a thing of trying to find people that make stuff like that - scratch and sniff cards. We ended up getting in touch with a company in New York called In Glorious Smell-O-Vision. There are these two really amazing smell artists who worked with me. I would basically say, “Okay, I want at this point of the film a number to flash up that refers to the card that says barbecued stink.” So I would go to these smell artists and say, How do we make something that smells like barbecued stink? And they go, “Okay, we're going to take campfire smell and mix it with manure and mix it with body odor, and we are going to combine that all together, and this percentage of each should give us the effect of barbecued stink.” That was kind of the workflow with them. It was really fun and I learned a lot about smell, which was super fascinating.
Was there a favorite scent that you guys came up with?
Grace Glowicki: It’s called Kill Shot. Towards the end of the movie Gravedigger lifts up her arms so that her armpit body odor takes out this mob that's trying to kill her. It is truly the most foul smell I have ever smelled. Every time I smell it, it gets me. Like, I can never be desensitized to this smell. It truly is a kill shot.
Now I'm thinking of that stinky fish where there’s tons of videos of people puking just from opening the can.
Grace Glowicki: So I did this with Ben [Petrie] and a couple of filmmakers at Rotterdam. We got the slinky fish, we opened it up and everything, and we all ate some. We were prepared to be puking from the smell of this stinky fish…but it was nowhere near Kill Shot, I will say.
Why did you go with the visual esthetics of theater, as opposed to a more traditional cinematic style like you did with Tito? And why did you choose to shoot it on film?
Grace Glowicki: I love theater, I started acting at university in a black box theater. So I guess I kind of fell in love with performance where the aesthetic was really just an actor in a spotlight. There were maybe a few props around - a bed or a chair or a table or something - but for the most part, it really was just actors in spotlight. I love performance so much. I love watching actors. It's so amazing to me that that is enough visually to captivate my attention. I don't need more bells and whistles. I find there's something so beautiful about it. There were these images of Iggy Pop performing on stage in spotlight in the 70s, and he would have, like, one silver glove on or something. I became obsessed with these photographs. They felt so expressive to me, and yet there was nothing to them, really, but a person - a performer - in a spotlight with a prop.
I knew it needed to be shot on film, because even though it was enough for me, it was going to be a lot to ask of an audience to get on board with. So I thought, because film is so beautiful and so forgiving and so analog, if I combine this analog theater aesthetic with this beautiful analog medium, it would present itself as more worthy of the audience's visual attention, and I think it worked. But also, of course, a testament to the cinematographer, Rhayne Vermette, who's the only person who could have shot this movie. She made this amazing film called Ste. Anne that played at TIFF and New York Film Festival a couple years back, and in it, there's all these amazing shots in darkness. She just knows how to work color in darkness. The combination of all of her, and film, and my love of these actors in spotlight, it just kind of came together to make the aesthetic.
This movie is very, very funny but also so genuinely touching. The romance feels very real. Can you talk about balancing humor and sincerity like that, so one doesn't overshadow the other?
Grace Glowicki: I start everything with an emotional core. I make sure each character has an emotional truth and is emotionally grounded. From that place, it's almost permission to push the comedy super, super far, because it's tethered. So it will still mean something and be coming from somewhere. I really don't like things that are just weird for weird’s sake, I find that really not funny for just my own personal taste. That's kind of how I approach comedy. If it's coming from a real place, you can go to the moon and it will still mean something.
So many artists have their heads in this Frankenstein space, not just adaptations of the book, but so many like Frankenstein adjacent stuff. Why do you think that’s been going on? Is it something in the air?
Grace Glowicki: It's so weird. When we were in the edit, little press announcements started to come out about all these different Frankenstein movies that were also about to be released, and it was so strange. It must be something in the zeitgeist. Maybe something unconsciously died collectively during COVID, and people are putting their lives back together. Maybe that's why, or maybe there's something with technology starting to dehumanize us all. Something is dying. We're grasping for some kind of humanity, some kind of resurrection of something from a previous existence. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's gotta be a reason.
What have been some of your favorite reactions to this film?
Grace Glowicki: The one that's coming to mind was at SXSW in the Q&A. A woman put up her hand and said, “I didn't know that I was coming to see this movie today, and I didn't know anything about it, but I happen to be a collector of morbid perfumes, and I have in my bag a gravedigger perfume that I'd like to give to you.” It felt like such a kismet, strange coincidence that she happened to be there and have a gravedigger perfume. It was very, very strange. So now I have this little souvenir here at my desk of this little perfume. It was pretty special. You always end up meeting some cool people, and there's always strange connections.
'Dead Lover' wafts into theaters March 20th, with select engagements in Stink-O-Vision.
