A burlesque stripper and her punk rock husband living in their own fascinating universe of a time that has passed. Still in love after 25 years, 'The DeVilles' tells a modern tale of love and living in a stylized world with no compromise.

The DeVilles live a strong and not quite uncomplicated love: a film about the American burlesque stripper Teri Lee Geary (aka Kitten DeVille) and her punk rock singer husband Shawn Geary.

Teri and Shawn live in a self imposed time bubble of romance caught somewhere between the 1950's and the 1980's. Their looks, their home and their lifestyle, they all fit the format. Teri looks like Marilyn Monroe and Shawn looks like Joe Strummer from The Clash. Aesthetics are a big part of identity.

The story told is a journey into the The DeVilles' universe, where two people don't want to grow up and define themselves by their symbiotic love. Their lives are so fused there are only a few boundaries left. The main characters Tery and Shawn are controlled by a love addiction which is not without consequences and which can turn to be rather self-destructive. In their twosomeness jealousy and attempts to control each other often arise.

The film meets the DeVilles after 25 years of passion and at a time of crisis. The lifestyle and the love all of a sudden have a back edge.

How do you break up such a glamorous and consumed life? The film shows the different nuances as their love does; vehemence, ugliness, beauty and tenderness.

From Stilinmotion Blog:

The DeVilles tells the story of the 25-year relationship of married couple, Teri Lee and Shawn Geary, who live in a charming, but well-worn, house in the Silverlake section of Los Angeles. Teri Lee's stage name is Kitten DeVille, and she's a big deal in the world of burlesque; she's been a headline performer for decades and still puts on a scintillating show. (She also teaches fat housewives how to striptease in her home studio.) Her husband, Shawn, is a rockabilly singer, who physically channels Joe Strummer, circa 1980. He and his band still rage like young punks, rehearsing at full throttle during the day in the garage, driving all the dogs in the neighborhood crazy.

The couple, with their three daughters, lives in a nostalgic world of their own making and we soon find out that the long-standing love between Teri Lee and Shawn has fissures and cracks that erupt into full-blown crises once in a while. While completely devoted to one another and their family, both have indulged in various infidelities over the years, and during a party one evening, Teri Lee has a major drama-queen moment in front of their guests revealing for all to see her private distress and heartache. She's got one of those wide-mouthed glamorous smiles, that if you look closely enough, reveals a lot of pain.

The film is shot and told as a riveting narrative, the subjects never directly addressing the camera/audience, but acting out the passion play of their family drama. There are several moments of self-consciousness even though most, if not all, of the scenes are staged explicitly for the camera. We are always aware that we are watching real people, but neither do we ever lose sight of the fact that they are all performers (including the youngest daughter who appears to be about eleven years old and has a stunning, powerful singing voice of her own). At the beginning of the film, I was a bit disoriented as to where I was geographically, but this is a tableau that could really only exist in Los Angeles, the city which resides under the relentless shadow of Hollywood dreams that never say die.

Teri Lee and Shawn are fascinating to watch when they're on their own, but together there is definitely "movie magic," the charisma and sexual energy between them quite powerful. One, literally, cannot exist without the other. The film, in turn, romanticizes this long-term love affair in all its glory, Laust Trier Mørk's cinematography shot in 16:9 HC-CAM, luscious and fulgent. The film ends with our hero driving off into the sunset towards Vegas in his pink Cadillac DeVille to rescue and re-kindle the passion of his only true love.

The DeVilles has no release date yet in Denmark (or anywhere else, at the moment), but is distributed worldwide by First Hand Films.

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