French star in town to face ghostly onscreen horror

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This article was published 29/10/2016 (3591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A French pop superstar is in Winnipeg, but she’s not here for a concert.

Mylène Farmer, who was born in Pierrefonds, Que., in 1961 before moving to France as a child, became a recording star in France in the 1980s and sold more than 30 million records with music that pushed the envelope, covering themes such as lesbianism, violence and religious impertinence.

When it came to sexually adventurous content, Farmer’s videos in the 1980s and ’90s made a practiced provocateur such as Madonna look like Debbie Gibson.

But Farmer’s first love has always been acting. (At the beginning of her career, she reportedly took the name “Farmer” in tribute to tragic Hollywood star Frances Farmer.) She comes to Winnipeg to act in the horror film Incident in a Ghost Land for French director Pascal Laugier, whose main claim to fame is the harrowing Quebec-lensed horror film Martyrs.

Farmer stars as Colleen, a mother who inherits a house from her aunt, but when she and her two young daughters arrive, they are confronted by murderous intruders. Sixteen years later, the two adult daughters, whose pronounced personality differences were exacerbated by the trauma, return to the house to encounter further disturbing events.

The two grown daughters will be played by Crystal Reed (Teen Wolf) and Canadian actress Anastasia Phillips (of the TV series Bomb Girls). The younger versions of the daughters are played by Emilia Jones (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) and Taylor Hickson (Deadpool).

Writer-director Laugier made waves in the horror genre with the 2008 thriller Martyrs, which was also about two young women caught in a violent confrontation, connected to a childhood trauma suffered by one of the women.

The film was hailed as an example of the New French Extremity movement with Laugier earning a place alongside other taboo-breaking French filmmakers, including Alexandre Aja (High Tension), Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl) and Gaspar Noé (Irreversible).

Incident in a Ghost Land, a France/Canada co-production, started principal photography Friday and continues for seven weeks until mid-December, shooting in Winnipeg and the town of Balmoral, 50 kilometres north of the city. The film is produced by the French company 5656 Films, Highwire Pictures and Winnipeg company Inferno Pictures.

It’s produced by Clément Miserez and Jean-Charles Levy, (who also produced the 2011 Winnipeg-lensed thriller Faces in the Crowd with Milla Jovovich), along with Scott Kennedy and Ian Dimerman.

Dimerman, of Winnipeg’s Inferno Pictures, hails the film as a true, co-operative Canada/France co-production and says it should be ready for theatrical release in the latter half of 2017.

Asked if the film will be as extreme in content as Martyrs, Dimerman would only say: “You’ll have to come to the theatre to find out.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing