Sins Within Sainthood The debut of the Louisville filmed ‘Saint Clare’

By Remy Sisk Photos By Quiver Distribution 

Three years ago, nearly to the day, Bella Thorne stood on the front lawn of a house in the Crescent Hill neighborhood of Louisville. When director Mitzi Peirone called, “action,” Thorne looked at her co-star and said, “I am demented debauchery at its finest.” This was the set of the film “Saint Clare,” an indeed dementedly debaucherous thriller that is now available to stream at home on demand.

“Saint Clare” is based on Don Roff’s bestselling novel “Clare at Sixteen” and is centered on college student Clare Bleecker, played on screen by Bella Throne. While Clare attends her buttoned-up Catholic school by day, she harbors a deeper darkness by night. Fueled by a formative childhood experience, Clare is driven, perhaps divinely, to slay evildoers, trusting in a higher power that what she is doing, while violent, is right.

The majority of the film was shot here in Louisville in just 15 days. While Kentucky offers tantalizing tax incentives for filmmakers, the film also needed to be grounded in a specific sort of environment, which is part of what led the team to shoot here.

Peirone, who also co-wrote the screenplay, shared with me how Louisville and the locations where they filmed began to influence the movie they were making. “We wanted to set the tale in an undisclosed location that felt like this could be any American town,” she says, “but eventually there was something about the heat and the architecture of certain locations that infused the story in almost a Southern Gothic flair, with its themes surrounding religious faith and social issues, violence and mysticism.”

Peirone points to one of the important thematic elements of “Saint Clare”; as religion is woven throughout the narrative itself, it also informs the visuals of the film, with lush abstract imagery that’s both hypnotic and unsettling. Several real locations here are a part of that imagery, and the way Peirone and her crew were able to capture this city on film will undoubtedly show viewers certain landmarks they’ve walked past 100 times in an entrancing new way.

Regarding their actual time in Louisville, Peirone is quick to praise the city as well as its host of film professionals. “I loved shooting in Louisville!” she says. “I found it to be such a welcoming and warm city, but most of all I think I loved it because of the incredible film crew and local cast I was able to work with. The crew felt like a family, and despite the hours being grueling and the pace relentless under blistering mid-July heat, I felt like I was in the hands of a group of wildly talented friends who had my back every step of the way. I left feeling like I was part of their clan.”

Having been on that set myself as a background actor, I can attest it was electric, with local crew members artfully collaborating with Peirone and her team in addition to such big names as Thorne, Ryan Phillippe and Rebecca De Mornay. Not only is it of course exciting for a film to be shot here, but “Saint Clare” stands out with its gripping and shadowy story, its intoxicatingly imaginative style and the moral and ethical questions it asks of its audience.

And as Peirone affirms, they are questions she intentionally poses to viewers, questions that don’t have immediate answers and questions that will stick with you long past the roll of the credits. “I think the best art asks the right questions instead of giving answers,” she says. “I’m interested in sparking conversations around our society’s treatment and silencing of marginalized people, this time specifically focusing on women, and to reflect on the meaning of any type of vocation, of dream, of ambition one may have, even in the face of adversities and solitude.”

“Saint Clare” is available to rent or buy on Amazon and Apple TV.