The way Susan Purdue sees it, the patricide she’s been planning for so long isn’t just an act of revenge, it’s a necessity. When her father returns to the family home, all is long since prepared and the killing can finally occur. The rotten soul will pay for his unpardonable, incestuous transgressions against his daughter when she was just a child. But once her dad is good and buried in the backyard, Susan doesn’t find the closure she anticipated. Tormented by a host of demons and trapped in a dead-end job, she slides quietly into a deep madness that blurs the distinction between her banal reality and her nightmarish, sadomasochistic fantasies. To survive, she submits herself to a strict dominator for whom the worst tortures are the same as the most gentle caresses.
Tanya has a boyfriend, skips school and gets her kicks hanging out in sleazy dives. She’d be a pretty unremarkable teen if not for the identity crisis that has gnawed inside her for so long. Adopted at birth, she ties her troubles in life to the fact that she has no idea who her true parents are. One afternoon, her therapist gives her what she has always wanted—confidential documents from the orphanage at which she was so cruelly abandoned. While the dossier doesn’t identify her father, her mother’s name is marked down as Susan Purdue. The destinies of these two women will cross, leading them both into a parallel world of unearthly creatures of flesh and latex, a place where the most shocking perversions are realized. At the heart of this purgatory of the senses, the masks will fall and the unbearable truth will surface in a sea of blood. Tanya and Susan, each other’s mirror image, will have to face themselves. Abandon hope, all who enter here.
With the stunning documentaries TRANSFIGURED NIGHTS and BOUND FOR PLEASURE, presented at Fantasia in 2008, the fetishistic fascinations of New Zealand filmmaker David Blyth (creator of the cult hits DEATH WARMED UP, RED BLOODED AMERICAN GIRL) were revealed. His highly anticipated return to fiction explores his themes anew, transposed to the screen like a lucid fever dream. One proceeds with caution into his dark universe, where only the logic of fantasy is the guide. Blyth surprises by expertly echoing the atmospherics of Lynch while recalling ANGEL MINE, his debut feature film. Blyth punctuates this journey with violent images as bizarre as they are disturbing, from a painful castration to an unusually grotesque birth. Bewitching and phantasmagorical, dangerous and amazing, WOUND will leave its mark on you.
—Simon Laperrière (translated by Rupert Bottenberg)
