Denis Côté Talks About On-Screen Sexuality in His Berlin Film ‘That Kind of Summer’

variety.com:

Ben Croll “I asked myself, why was it so difficult to name a Quebecois film from the past 25 years that treated sexuality as its central theme?” Côté told Variety. “Why could France foster directors who filmed the human body in direct and unselfconscious ways, and Quebec could not?

Were Quebecois more prudish than others?”And so the Montreal-based filmmaker started on his 14th feature, which follows three so-called “hypersexual” women, plagued with troubled histories and fragile mental states, as they participate in a month-long therapy retreat.

But as he developed the script with a local sexologist, the filmmaker saw potential traps in two very different directions.“The film could never be meant to judge,” Côté explained. “I didn’t want to present certainties and make false promises.

Cinema is about making your way in the dark, so by the end you’re supposed to realize there are no real answers to these problems — if they’re even problems at all.”And in his effort to separate sexual compulsion from clinical pathology, the filmmaker didn’t want to go too far in the other direction as well. “The film is a celebration of all forms of sexuality,” Côté continued, “But it never says, hey check this out in a kind of Lars von Trier way.