Bruce LaBruce wants to bring fucking back to theatres: “We’re all cruising tonight”
10 min read
Bailey Slater reports on a memorable night at the Canadian filmmaker’s London premiere for The Visitor, which doubled as a sex party and club night

Bruce LaBruce’s The Visitor afterparty hosted by Klub Verboten. Photography by Gold and Cummings ‘Heavy Consumption’ (formerly know as The London Vagabond.)
The first sex party I went to was sort of by accident, and I wore jeans. The second was held by cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce this past Saturday as a premiere for his new political porn flick, The Visitor. Hosted at EartH in Hackney, it was the director’s first sex party-cum-screening too, despite an admittedly provocative history at the helm of films like Raspberry Reich, Skin Flick and Hustler White. But, as he later points out, it’s certainly not the first time viewers have got it off at his screenings. That is an occurrence which is only too common.
Presented by contemporary art non-profit a/political, the event promised a smorgasbord of titillation, acting as an immersive art experience not in wall-to-wall Van Gogh animations, but in partnership with London-based fetish night, Klub Verboten. Think of it as a meta-installation intent on replicating the magical viewing experience in porn theatres like Toronto’s ill-fated Metro, which housed many of the director’s early flirtations with the medium. With live-streamed playrooms replicating scenes from the film itself, the passive viewer and dancefloor reveller become an integral part of the performance. It would seem that we’re all cruising tonight.
LaBruce’s latest work takes much of its source material from Teorema (1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lusty melodrama following an upper-crust family whose lives are forever changed by a sensuous and otherworldly new acquaintance. Ironing out their various sexual repressions with gusto, the effort rattled conservative Italy and landed the director an obscenity charge, but LaBruce isn’t interested in re-treading old ground. Instead, his retelling is an allegory for the refugee experience here in the UK, kitted out with his signature flourishes of camp and erotic slapstick.

Eva Oh and Bruce LaBruce at the London premier of The Visitor at EartH Hackney. Courtesy A/POLITICAL and KLUB VERBOTEN Photography: Zbigniew Kotkiewicz
I rolled up to the latex red carpet (which smelled surprisingly unlubey) as revellers were still ditching their day drag, squeezing themselves into rubber gowns or strapping on leather buckles. It couldn’t have been a worse day to be the outlier who opted for the premiere-appropriate black tie dress code instead of greasing up for the darkroom, though in fairness to myself, there was just no time to nip into Prowler for a shiny wrestling unitard.
Wearing a jacket ended up coming in clutch after wading through the innards of EartH and arriving at the venue’s gargantuan Art Deco theatre. For obvious reasons, storage heaters and latex are far from an ideal pairing, so the eager crowd shuffled a little closer together for warmth in the January chill. I notice playwright and trans cabaret host Ray Filar, who later provides The Visitor’s most gruelling performance as the daughter, stalking the aisles in a riff on Bjork’s Marjan Pejoski swan gown, opting instead for a flamingo’s neck and some lengthy tulle. A coterie of East London nightlife fixtures and exhibitionists file into the remaining seats, some lamenting their recently single status to friends, others renting pillows to soften the blow of a three-hour sit-down.
The night’s Q&A portion is hosted by dominatrix Eva Oh, who is followed up on stage by a group of submissive gimps, two of which configure themselves into a glass table while the others kneel in virtue beside two chairs to serve as drinks holders. “Should I say thank you, or fuck you?” quips LaBruce when he arrives to rapturous applause. Oh takes the director to task on the project’s liberatory mission and the pair commiserate on the dwindling spaces available for public sex, even for established nights like Verboten, which is unable to secure regular premises.
Back inside, Josh Caffe’s sex-tech selections are in full swing, and there’s enough black rubber on the dancefloor to fit the wheels of an entire F1 championship.
LaBruce gives a Whitney Houston BET Awards shout-out to his well-valued cast and crew, then we’re reminded of the house rules: no chatting or opening drinks (theatre acoustics) and try to keep any copulation to a minimal volume, everything else is pretty much fair game. Cue the blistering techno soundtrack devised by Hannah Holland as LaBruce’s film takes us Thames-side, straight into the heart of a paranoid, post-Brexit Britain. Our protagonist, a chiselled intergalactic embodiment of the right’s “illegal alien” bogeyman, then emerges from a rumbling suitcase, drifting across the city as he embarks on a mission of sexual anarchy.
At its horniest, the film proposes a future of sexual liberation as the key to political harmony, which, in other words, means the best poundings can change the world, saving you from a life of servitude, bigotry and shame. The visitor is the key to it all, his dalliances are a recolonisation of the apathetic bourgeoisie, which in this case is a family of stifled sluts. An unrelenting assault on the senses ensues as the family descends into horny, and at times incestual, delirium. Pleasure is pushed to the max, interspersed with strobe-lit slogan cards (“fuck for the many not the few” being a personal favourite) and apparitions of extreme perversion. It’s only in the visitor’s absence that this unit can finally confront their various neuroses and adjust to a new, liberated reality. Who knew cross-cultural exchange could be so filthy?
Much like a club, The Visitor comes to life in liminal spaces scantly lit and scored by biting beats, so the transition from screening to party goes down a treat. I bump into the film’s resident father fucker Kurtis Lincoln in the smoking area, leaning in on his first porn credit. The artist initially met LaBruce through Tramps! director Kevin Hegge, quickly bonding over their queeny humour and even taking a trip to the courthouse during the sentencing of Tottenham’s ‘eunuch-maker’. We talk about his casting as a spoilt little white boy (“as a mixed race working-class kid, it was the best role to play”), the intricacies of eating shit on-screen (spoiler alert!), which in this case was a blend of Weetabix, instant coffee and flax seeds, and letting his love of the absurd seep into the role. “It’s meant to be confusing and strange and booky,” he says, “and that’s what I’m most proud of – the weirdness of it.”

'The Visitor' afterparty photographed by Gold and Cummings ‘Heavy Consumption’ (formerly know as The London Vagabond.)

'The Visitor' afterparty photographed by Gold and Cummings ‘Heavy Consumption’ (formerly know as The London Vagabond.)
Back inside, Josh Caffe’s sex-tech selections are in full swing, and there’s enough black rubber on the dancefloor to fit the wheels of an entire F1 championship. I catch LaBruce on the crowd’s periphery, taking in the scenes in a jacket from Foundry, a/political’s sister gallery and the setting for the production’s bellowing climax in Maubourguet. As we cut through the throb of bodies and locked lips, he’s overcome with a sense of déjà vu.
The setting is just like The Visitor’s final day of shooting in the UK, he explains, where an audience of 150 were invited to test-drive the viewer/voyeur experience at a/political’s HQ, both through peep-holes and the monitors streaming a live feed from various cameras. “It was very interesting as it made me conscious of myself as a director, like I was performing myself,” he reflects.
I return to the four screens hovering over the dancefloor before I leave, desperate for one last nosy. Tonight I’ve caught all manner of performances inside the film’s replica boudoir, from friends twerking to couples mid-choke, even a wide-eyed Instagram mutual was giving it a go. This time though, it’s the shy, masked adonis standing beside me at the bar, thrusting to Hannah Holland’s masterful closing set with complete abandon that reminds me of LaBruce’s message before the screening: “Sexual liberation will set you free, and transform you.”
With that, it’s off into the frost of Dalston High Street with the hope of transforming into someone else myself, somebody warm.
