Totem Picks Up Buzzy Sexually Candid Open Relationship Comedy ‘Follies,’ Bound for Locarno (EXCLUSIVE)

Paris-based sales-production house Totem – whose sales slate has included “Compartment No. 6,” My Favourite Cake” and “The Hypnosis” – has boarded worldwide sales on “Follies,” a sexually candid open relationship comedy.

Set to world-premiere at August’s Locarno Film Festival, the French-language pic marks the buzzy feature debuts a director of Montreal screenwriting powerhouse Éric. K. Boulianne.

Also an actor, as a writer he has scored with both breakout crowd pleasers, such as “Compulsive Liar,” Canada’s No. 1 box office hit in 2019, and also with more left-of-field items such as 2022 comedy “Viking,” selected for Toronto’s prestigious Platform competition.

Boulianne also won recently at Locarno as a director, his “Making Babies” scooping Locarno’s 2023 Leopard of Tomorrow for best short.

Co-written by Boulianne and co-starring the director and Catherine Chabot (“Compulsive Liar,” “La Candidate”),“Follies” (“Folichonneries”) turns on François and Julie, together for 16 years and parents of two children, who can no longer connect intimately. “They decide to open up their relationship in order to engage in sexual follies that will allow them to learn more about themselves… But it can’t be that simple, right?”

It isn’t as they battle to create a new connection while squaring mutual and family love and self-absorbing singular sexual desire.

“The ‘Follies’ couple seeks to rediscover their desire, each in their own way but always paying attention to the other. Eric paints a funny, moving, and resolutely contemporary family portrait,” Totem said in a statement.

A brief teaser captures that touching comedy as Julie tags along to a hardware store where François wants to buy a chain to further his tentative new line in S&M.

That rediscovery in some ways looks to be undoubtedly enrichening.

“What’s your type of follies?” asks the man in a happily swinging couple in the teaser. “Aaaaaah,” both François and Julie answer in tandem hesitantly, because until this point they hadn’t really thought about that question at all. “Follies” charts their journey to self discovery.

The teaser also anticipates something of the film’s style: Unfussed in direction, focused on character, and especially François and Julie’s reactions as rookies in a suddenly opening up world where everybody else seems so much more candid, confident and experienced.

“Follies” is produced by Québécois filmmakers’ cooperative Coop Vidéo de Montréal, “its mission to support films that challenge both form and narrative,” it said in a statement.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Totem Films. With their eye for edgy, heartfelt cinema, they felt like the perfect match for Éric K. Boulianne’s debut feature. ‘Follies’ is an offbeat, bittersweet comedy that aims to bring a little pleasure into the world,” Coop Vidéo de Montreal added.

Boulianne also wrote, starred in and co-produced “Little Brother,” selected for 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week.

At Locarno, Totem is also handling sales for International Competition title “Donkey Days,” from Rosanne Pel (“Light as Feathers”), described as a dark family comedy. A third Totem Locarno premiere is Filmmakers of the Present entry “Fantasy,” a rites of passage drama from Slovenia’s first-time feature writer-director known by the moniker Kukla.