As Laurence Turcotte-Fraser demonstrates in The End of Wonderland (VF of The End of Wonderland), her first feature-length documentary, Tara Emory never has time to get bored. When she’s not making flamboyant costumes or alluring Victorian corsets for her naughty photos and fetish shows, she’s restoring old automobiles, mostly French ones, a passion she inherited from her father, whose yard was littered with Beetle, whole and in parts.
Since 2004, Tara Emory has also devoted herself to her first feature film, UpUranus, a sci-fi porno film of which she is the screenwriter, director, producer and one of the main actresses. Thanks to Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, who was mainly involved in the editing, the 44-year-old trans woman from Massachusetts will be able to proudly present her film, after the screening of The End of WonderlandSaturday evening at the Café Cléopâtre.
“We work on it 12 hours a day! It’s coming ! promises laughing Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, joined in Boston by videoconference. On Sunday, we shot the last scene, which is a virtual reality scene that takes place in Paris. We are doing the special effects. I don’t think it’ll be the final version, but we’re going to present something epic on Saturday at Fetish Weekend. »
It was at the Montreal Fetish Weekend that the two directors met a few years ago. The first was there at the invitation of a friend who had asked her to come and film his show, the second provided the first part of the show. Between the two of them, a bond was quickly established. After several hours of conversation, the second confided to the first that, like her father, she had a compulsive hoarding disorder.
“I found it really interesting. Every time Tara came back to Montreal for Fetish Weekend, with her permission, I followed her with my camera. We developed a bond of trust, we shot a few things left and right, but I didn’t yet have a feature film project. The more I shot, the more I wanted to make a film with her, to explore all aspects of her life. Then I wanted to make the film around his studio, Wonderland, where there were two sides to his life: pornography above and cars below. »
Shattered dreams
Despite the character’s eccentricity and flamboyance, her candy pink imagery and her penchant for frills, The End of Wonderland turns out to be the intimate portrait of a woman who fears getting old and having to slip away before having realized all her dreams.
“Women are always under the pressure of a certain standard of perfection: after 30 years, you’re outdated. The idea of women with an expiration date is completely unfair because we are whole beings as long as we are a productive member of society. At all ages, a woman has a beautiful body, a body that changes: why wouldn’t we have the right to grow old? asks the 32-year-old filmmaker.
“Getting old is hard for women, especially in pornography. Tara wonders if she will be able to continue taking pictures. In addition, it has material spread over 20 years. In person, people sometimes tell her that she actually looks older than in her photos. Although she’s comfortable with it, the documentary makes her a little nervous because there are times when she’s not wearing makeup. Tara would have preferred it to be her public figure, the one who sells dreams, but I really wanted to deconstruct it. »
On the one hand, Laurence Turcotte-Fraser illustrates Tara Emory’s distress at being evicted from the barn that serves as her studio and warehouse: “She doesn’t just accumulate objects, but also ideas, projects, dreams. At some point, she no longer knows what is important. The big human work behind the film we made with Tara is to have had great conversations about her studio, her cars. Tara, who finds herself alone with her imaginary universes, has something to sort out inside to move on. There’s something sad about losing her studio, but if she had kept it, she wouldn’t have solved her problems or finished her film. »
On the other hand, the documentary filmmaker evokes the microaggressions experienced by trans people: “During the seven years that I shot the film, I saw the politicization of the trans body. With Tara, when we went to Mexico, we stopped in Texas during the bathroom bill, the law which obliges to go in such or such toilet according to the sex assigned to the birth. Even though her body is politicized, Tara is a free agent. She does not want to be associated with politics. Tara doesn’t react like people who say misgendering is violent. You can see that it annoys her, that it hurts her, but she understands and reacts gently. »
The one who is finishing the editing of her second feature film, The city oustedabout the housing crisis in Montreal, which she shot last year with Priscillia Piccoli, says that The End of Wonderland allowed her to learn a lot about trans identity, fetishism and sex workers. Better still, she found, in particular by presenting the film at the International Documentary Meetings in Montreal and at the London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, that it could also comfort trans people and open the eyes of their loved ones to their reality.
“I feel like there’s a rift that’s forming because there’s a polarization from the right, there’s a lot of animosity. I’m afraid that we’ll lose the ground acquired in my community and I hope that this film will be unifying. It’s not a movie that tells you what to think. I present to you Tara, pornstar trans, I’ll let you live a few moments with her. If you have the balls strong enough, you can then watch his science fiction film, otherwise the documentary is enough. Then, when you meet someone like her on the street, you won’t look at them the same way. »