Nicolas Pesce‘s highly anticipated sophomore film is what several will call a film lover’s delight. While his debut film (The Eyes of My Mother) which was also featured at the fest was more macabre in detail and more disturbing in tone, with Piercing, Pesce leaves no white space as he paints this canvas with every color in the filmmaker’s toolbox (with glorious production design by Alan Lampert). A gleefully and heavily stylized, art-deco friendly homage to the source material, the original film and a whole slew of filmmakers (e.g.: De Palma) who’ve contributed to films that play with the knifes and with darkest human desire, this titillating essay on sadomasochistic and the human psyche played really well for the Midnight crowd on hand. The cast (formidable perfs by Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska) and crew were on for world premiere post-screening Q&A at the Library theatre.