Queer filmmaker Bruce LaBruce says Amazon has removed his most recent film Saint-Narcisse from its streaming platform in the U.S. and is refusing to sell the film in its online store in the U.K.
Over the weekend LaBruce posted about the film’s removal from the streaming platform on his official Instagram account. “After 6 months streaming on Amazon in the US & France, my movie ‘Saint-Narcisse’ has been removed for ‘offensive content’ with no other explanation!” the filmmaker wrote.
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“Meanwhile, as someone on twitter pointed out, on the Season 3 premiere episode of Amazon’s The Boys, a microscopic superhero entered the urethra of another man’s penis and gorily exploded him from the inside. I guess i should have blown up the twins in my movie while they were having sex and no one would have said anything.”
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The provocative 2020 film centers on a pair of identical twins (Felix Antoine Duval) who embark on an incestuous affair in the 1970s. As LaBruce notes, Saint-Narcisse had been available to rent and purchase on Prime Video in the U.S. until recently. The DVD of the film can still be purchased via the online retailer.
“We are totally mystified as to why Amazon Prime Video is refusing to make the critically acclaimed Saint-Narcisse available to its customers, both here in the UK and internationally,” says Tom Abell, chairman of Peccadillo Pictures, the film’s U.K. distributor. “When their system originally refused to take the film we pointed out that it was available on Amazon in the U.S. and France and then it was removed from those platforms as well, despite being on them for over six months. The DVD continues to be sold by Amazon but they won’t stream it.”
Deadline reports that a source at Amazon claims that the film is still under consideration for streaming in the U.K.
Both Abell and LaBruce point out that while Saint-Narcisse is provocative, it is not particularly sexually explicit.
“It’s almost reassuring to know that I can still be banned or censored in this day and age,” LaBruce says. “What’s interesting to me is that it’s not the sexual explicitness of Saint-Narcisse that is preventing it from being streamed on Amazon Prime – there is none – but the subversive and challenging sexual themes and implications of the film.”
“I’m genuinely puzzled because there are numerous other films available on Amazon Prime Video which explore similar themes, and several which are far more sexually explicit,” Abell says. “It is somewhat alarming to note the company’s increasing tendency to refuse certain queer films access to their platform.”
LGBTQ Nation reached out to Amazon for comment.
