Dwight started his career in the early 90s working at Roger Corman Studios in Venice Beach where he learned to hone the craft of filmmaking. His directorial debut was in 2010 with the short film, I Love Nancy, an exploration into one man’s obsessive relationship with the plastic objects that consumed him. The film was accredited for being a hard-hitting existential look into the synthetic side of life that does us harm. He and his wife, Laetitia, enjoy discerning the dark contradictions in humanity. This inspired them to create the characters of The Victorians which portray people living on the fringe of a society.
The Victorians follows a group of misanthropic misfits feeding off each other in the city of Amsterdam. While Abba is fighting his homosexuality and love for the sadist Danny, his brother Rey is falling for Danny’s sister, Faith. The devious junkie, Alfi, is Abba’s faithful liege, but the worm might turn if Abba does not fulfil his promise of taking Alfi away to Spain to get clean. The prostitute Faith and her sadistic tour guide brother, Danny, enjoy luring unsuspecting tourists into their web of sexual exploitation. As Virgil, the sexual deviant hotel owner, delicately positions himself, to help pick up the pieces, he comforts their latest victim Joey, the cocky American kid, who travels to Amsterdam only to find tragedy when he falls into their clutches.
Jordon Maycock as Abba, in the indie film, “The Victorians”
Addiction, sexuality and a desire for a ‘better life’; the beautiful lie unfolds, driving our players to the fringe as we watch the darkness unravel in each of them. The sexual ambiguity, playing out much more like an existential ‘whodunnit’, keeps us guessing as to their true loyalties and secret sexual desires.
Stephen Underwood as Danny, the sadistic tour guide, in “The Victorians”
Danny was a mentor to the two thieving brothers, but what spell has he cast over Abba? We see Abba fighting his desire for Danny, and we get the feeling that, aside from Danny being a psychopath rapist, maybe the romance might have worked… Abba loathes himself because he loves it so much. As they stalk each other, taunt each other, the courtship of the beguiled lover, playing for each other’s worst, and little by little, tearing each other apart.
Abba convinces himself and Alfi that one big score will enable them to escape to Spain- the lie he uses to keep Alfi under his thumb. Their co-dependent relationship, a dark comedic farce, providing cathartic levity to the inner woven drama.
Jordan Maycock (Abba) and Neil Webster (Alfi)
Virgil, the reclusive hotel owner, walks the thin line between a Good Samaritan Buddhist and a sexual deviant using his so-called spirituality as a clever facade to fulfil his sexual desires. Is he secretly lusting after the boy or does he genuinely want to help? Why not both? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. But, with Joey we get the feeling it might not be such a bad thing after all. Bringing into question just where his sexuality truly lies? This horrible ordeal has possibly awoken his true self, helping him escape the vain shell of his youthful bravado, paradoxically enabling him to become something different – maybe better, maybe worse.
Morgan Rees-Davies as Virgil in “The Victorians”
Our dysfunctional misfits attempt to find happiness in a world that may not want them anyway, where the only joy to be found is by embracing the darkness within.
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