Leslie, My Name is Evil is bloody brilliant. From the moment the film starts with a sequence of images depicting Jesus and Christian iconography, juxtaposed with photos and footage of the Vietnam War and American life in 1960's, you enter a world that catalogues a poignant social commentary of the time with a post-modernist spin.

BC native Reginald Harkema has made a kick-ass film! The energy of the actors on-screen is magnetic, and the colourful and campy anti-realism feel distinguishes the set and wardrobe to give full sensory to the viewers. The music of Paul Kehayas is also a perfect fit for the psychedelic and wild ride the movie takes you on.

I will admit that I was a little worried to see how humour would even be layered into the grim tale of Charles Manson and his female followers. Made with so much intelligence and wit however, the uncomfortable fades away and laughter and entertainment prevail!

The story of Leslie (Kristin Adams) is revealed and the empathy you have for this young woman quickly grows - Leslie has a hard time coping with her parents' divorce and soon after is pressured to make a decision by her mother that traumatizes her.

You see, Leslie is not really evil, but once she is seduced by tabs of LSD and free love notions she is naively seduced to the Manson family compound. Here she is re-invented as Lou-Lou, an evil born from Leslie. You begin to wonder how someone could be driven to the edge of no reason due to disconnection from happiness in life and the hope of living.

Leslie's story is neatly intertwined with that of an ordinary chap named Perry (Gregory Smith). A young and handsome man raised cleanly in Nixon American values, Perry faces temptation from his celibate Christian girlfriend when he starts fantasizing about Leslie as a juror on the Manson family trial. He is entranced by mainly Leslie, and from that instant his world is shaken and stirred with carnal desire. Harkema chooses to continuously flash images throughout the film that remind us that while this trial was going on, millions where being slaughtered in Vietnam by American hands.

This film is undeniably one of my favourites this Toronto International Film Festival. Full of so many different genres of appeal, funny and serious, campy and provocative, this makes me proud to be both a Canadian and Torontonian (it is filmed right here)!

I leave you with a snip of the Q & A following the film:

Question to Gregory Smith - What was your biggest challenge?

A: The sacrifice sequence was the first scene we shot. So I got to introduce myself to everybody covered in blood that was pretty crazy! Also that and the blood is so sticky that everything you walked by you got stuck to, flies kept landing on me and getting stuck. The whole thing was very challenging.

Question to Reginald Harkema - You said that this film was a love song to America, perhaps you could elaborate?

A: It's a love song to America, the lovely Cindy Wolfe here...who is the American, who it is also a love song to...my girlfriend of 9 years - she has this southern republican, Tennessee father who we go and visit on one Christmas, and then her mother and her family (her mom is dead now unfortunately)...her family are all liberal left-wing lesbians in Portland, so that's the other Christmas. So it's back and forth and I see the cultural wars happening in America and the cultural divide in the very relationships I have. But the thing it is that I love the southern republican father and I love the lesbians in Portland. So, it's a movie about the American cultural wars and it's a love song to them.