Anyone experiencing a strange sensation while watching the sex comedy Kiki: Love to Love at the Spanish Film Festival can rest easy. You haven't developed a rare form of paraphilia*. You've merely had a flashback.
Kiki, which opens the festival around the country, is a remake of Josh Lawson's 2014 film The Little Death, which made just $400,000 at the Australian box office but has had a remarkable afterlife overseas.
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Trailer: The Little Death
A laugh-out-loud funny, honest and ultimately moving look at the secret sex lives of five ordinary couples.
Kiki was an enormous box office success in Spain last year, selling more than one million tickets, for a gross of roughly $7 million. And it's not alone.
A Lithuanian remake of The Little Death, O, ne! O, taip! was released in 2016, selling twice as many tickets as it did in Australia even though the country has a population of three million. There are remakes in the works in France and Germany too, and deals are close to being finalised for versions for Poland, Estonia, Latvia and even India, a country not known for its open embrace of sex on screen.
"I can't wait to see how the film, its characters and its story grow and evolve through the eyes of so many talented international filmmakers," says Lawson, who wrote, directed and acted in the ensemble comedy, which was widely (if a little unfairly) regarded as a failure in its home territory.
According to producer Jamie Hilton, the film has sold to 25 territories, representing more than 130 countries, and has been theatrically released in many of them.
It had a small release in the United States, but in Poland "played extremely well", selling more than 330,000 tickets (equating to about $2.3 million).
It has, Hilton says, taken more than its budget (nominally about $2 million, though many of the key creatives put their fees back in as equity). "But it's difficult to say how much. Certainly for a relatively small Australian film, it's lived a very big life internationally."
![Josh Lawson](/web/20170424054606im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/n/u/9/0/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvntvi.png/1492653848534.jpg)
Local critics weren't especially kind to the film, which included Margaret Pomeranz's son Josh among the producers, but The Little Death fared better with the public – it won the audience awards at the SXSW film festival in 2015 and in Thessaloniki in 2014.
Unfortunately, not everyone who enjoyed it paid for the pleasure; according to Hilton, as it was illegally downloaded around 200,000 times in its first weekend alone.
![Paco Leon, centre.](/web/20170424054606im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/n/u/6/x/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvntvi.png/1492653848534.jpg)
Paco Leon, the director and star of Kiki, was clearly one for whom the film resonated, though he wasn't at first convinced he should remake it when approached by the people who had bought the Spanish-language rights.
"I really liked it – it's a great film, with exquisite performances – but I initially rejected their offer because I didn't think I was the best director for it," he says.
His first two movies (Carmina or Blow Up and Carmina y Amen) had been "very personal films", whereas The Little Death was five interlocking stories about sexual fetishes. But when he was told he could shape the remake any way he wanted, he was on board.
The Lithuanian version of The Little Death is "a shot-by-shot remake", according to Hilton, but Leon made some substantial changes with Kiki, particularly to the ending, which is far more upbeat than Lawson's darkly comic conclusion.
"I found it interesting to start at the same point, where the sexual particularities seem to be the problem, but then have the stories resolve themselves through these particularities as the solution," he says. "I also wanted to socially diversify the stories, from the chalet with its domestic servants to the caravan park. I think Spanish society is not as homogenous as Australia's."
For Lawson, watching his creation morph is a source of both pleasure and pride.
"They say making a film is like giving birth to a baby," he says. "If that's true then watching all these remakes is like watching that baby change slightly as it gets older. It's still yours in your heart, but you have to set it free and let it become its own thing as it grows."
*Paraphilia: Sexual interest in objects, situations, or individuals that are atypical
Kiki: Love to Love opens the Spanish Film Festival in Melbourne on Thursday April 20, and Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth on April 27. It also screens in Sydney and Canberra. Details: spanishfilmfestival.com
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