One of the most haunting shorts to come out of this year’s Fantasia Film Festival is filmmaker Erica Orofino’s “Dirty Bad Wrong,” about a woman who does sex work to provide for her six year old. When she needs money to give the child the best superhero birthday ever, she agrees to engage in a client’s very dark and disturbing fetish.
We aren’t saying what that fetish is — or otherwise spoiling plot turns — because the most captivating part of Orofino’s very controlled story is how successfully it doles out information over a taut timeline, while increasing our sympathy for young mom Sid (a very impressive Michaela Kurminsky.)
The film also refuses to take the easy route of pitting Sid against a pure monster, and instead raises questions about whether real consent can exist in a state of desperation,— and even what constitutes desperation.
Orofino, who is from Montreal, the home of Fantasia, earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from York University and is an alum of the Director’s Lab at the Canadian Film Centre. Her work has earned two bronze Cannes Lions awards, among many others. We talked over email with Orofino about making “Dirty Bad Wrong,” complicated characters, and gray areas.
MovieMaker: What was the first spark of the idea for this film, and how did it evolve? You mentioned at the Fantasia screening Monday that you intended it as a feature. Might you expand it?
Erica Orofino: I am really interested in the idea of paraphilia — which are sexual fetishes that are atypical, unusual, and sometimes veer into unsafe or destructive territory. I find it fascinating that some people have these desires, and I started thinking about what that might look like, if a character were to have one of these persistent urges, and has found a way to satisfy it in a safe and consensual way.
I have a feature currently in the works that deeply explores the idea of loving someone so much you want to eat them. It’s a queer body horror, like Call Me by Your Name meets Raw. But for “Dirty Bad Wrong,” I was challenged at the Canadian Film Centre to make something short, push myself as a writer and director, and develop my voice — and this is what came of it.
It’s a very different story from my feature, but with one of the themes or ideas, distilled. And then paraphilia element aside, expanded to explore the relationship between a young mother and her child.
MovieMaker: You do an amazing job of rolling out the horror elements and keeping everything very grounded. How did you decide what to reveal and when?
Erica Orofino: I love revealing just enough throughout the story for the audience to connect the dots along the way — or maybe they miss something but by the end of the movie they can think back on elements they’ve seen and connect them at the end. Someone told me once that the best endings are “surprising yet inevitable.”
MovieMaker: Something happens behind a curtain near the end and we never know what it is — do you, as the writer, know? Or do you think leaving it a mystery makes it more effective?
Erica Orofino: I definitely know what’s going on behind that curtain! Given production limitations like time and budget, you have to make some hard choices like how much should I reveal here, and what is more important: knowing exactly what’s happening behind the curtain, or keeping the tone, and emotional arc intact and consistent throughout the film?
If we had a much bigger budget for the film, I might have let the audience see behind the curtain, but I think letting the audience imagine what’s going on is more powerful a tool in this circumstance and I feel it paid off here.
MovieMaker: There’s a moment with our protagonist and a woman on the subway who seems to have experienced the same awful thing she has. Is this an epidemic, or have they both had an encounter with the same man?
Erica Orofino: In the subway, Sid recognizes this woman as “just like her.” I went back and forth while writing the script, with this exact question. Should I be implying that there’s an entire underground group of people who are into this? Are they all working together? Is there an entire network, or should I guide the audience to believe it’s just this one guy?
By leaving that part unanswered I’m trying to leave space for the viewer to imagine whatever they think is the scarier course. I think answering that question, in the movie, would have opened up an entire can of worms that wasn’t important to the story to address.
MovieMaker: How far do you see the metaphor of the film extending? She’s a sex worker, but by the end, she’s more of a sex and violence worker. It’s incredibly upsetting. But she also seems proud of her ability to protect and provide for her child.
Erica Orofino: It was so important to me to represent sex work and sex workers in a positive or neutral light. There’s a clear line in the film — the work Sid does to support herself and her child, which is sex work and does not put herself in any discomfort or danger. And what she does at the end of the film, which is something else entirely, and while consensual, there is a gray area there, because she is doing this out of pure desperation.
I try not to impose my own views or judgements on the characters in the movies I make. What I want is for the viewer to make their own decisions, maybe reflect on what they would do in this situation, and ideally empathize with Sid — whether you agree with what she’s done or not.
Erica Orofino on Casting ‘Dirty Bad Wrong’
MovieMaker: How did you find and cast your excellent lead, Michaela Kurminsky, and the rest of your cast?
Erica Orofino: I saw Michaela in this awesome film called Firecrackers (directed by Jazmin Mozaffari) and since then knew I wanted to work with her some day. We met for coffee just before the pandemic, and chatted about acting and filmmaking and what kinds of roles she was excited to play, and I was just like … I need to work with her.
Michaela’s curiosity and depth of character is matched only by her kindness and open heartededness as a person, which translates to Michaela as an actor. I didn’t have a role for her just then, and then the world shut down for a year, and we hadn’t spoken in a while. We worked with Jesse Griffiths casting for this film, and when Jesse presented Michaela to us as an option I was like “Oh my god. hell yeah. Michaela will kill this role.”
It was Jesse who found Jack Greig [who plays Sid’s child, also named Jesse]. Jack had at that point only been in a commercial, and he was really excited to act some more, and when we met him in person for his callback we were so impressed with how natural he was in front of the camera. The gender of Jesse in the movie was unimportant.
I actually wrote Jesse as queer/non-binary (that’s why Sid always refers to Jesse as “they” in the movie). It was only important that whoever played Jesse was sweet, curious, and playful. So we cast Jack and it’s so clear that was the perfect choice.
I found Cody Ray Thompson (who plays John Doe) at a restaurant on the East side of Toronto! I was having dinner, and Cody was working, and I just had this gut feeling, and I asked, “Hey — are you an actor?” And he was, obviously, I mean he looks like a movie star, and I was like, “You should come audition for this role I’m currently casting.” It was a total shot in the dark! When he came to audition he did such an incredible job, he fit the role so perfectly, he had to be John Doe.
MovieMaker: It’s interesting that John Doe is so conventionally attractive, and somewhat considerate, aside from his repugnant proclivity. Why did you opt to make him seem so normal in some ways?
Erica Orofino: Yes! I love this question. I think the obvious route to take would have been “make John Doe kind of a dick” or “make John Doe look creepy, since he has a creepy fetish.” But that doesn’t feel like real life.
People aren’t caricatures, and it didn’t feel true to life to make John Doe into one. Clients of sex workers are everyday people and there are a million different reasons someone might hire a sex worker.
That’s one of the main reasons. The other important factor is that I like characters who have a balance of light and darkness. John Doe is kind, he doesn’t force anything on Sid; they’ve got a familiarity, a trust between them despite his atypical desires. I think characters, like people, are way more interesting when they cannot be pigeonholed as “good” or “bad.” The gray area is where most of us exist, anyway.
You can read more about Erica Orofino here and read more of our Fantasia coverage here.
Main image: Michaela Kurminsky in “Dirty Bad Wrong” by Erica Orofino. Image by Samatha Falco.