Writer-director Sook-Yin Lee drew inspiration for her first feature-length film from the well of her own experience as a shy, inhibited young girl who fell head-over-heels with a musician.
“The only way that I could express my love,” said Lee, “was by getting extremely drunk, falling down both flights of stairs on the way to his place and standing over him, while he was sleeping in bed, and vomiting on him.”
Lee’s “messy, young-love experience” serves as the germ for her feature directorial debut, Year Of The Carnivore, which opens in Vancouver theatres next Friday.
The film focuses on Sammy Smalls, a doe-eyed grocery-store detective whose love for a busker starts a quest to further her bedroom experience. Her search climaxes with her blackmailing shoplifters in the woods for sex lessons.
Lee, a former MuchMusic VJ and host of CBC’s Definitely Not The Opera, said she was interested in telling an inverted love story. “Often love stories don’t resemble reality to me — perfect makeup and bed sheets tucked under the arm.”
