MONTREAL — The director/actor team behind one of the most successful films in Canadian history, Bon Cop, Bad Cop, is back with Cadavres, a bloody tale of incest, drugs and murder billed by its producers as a provocative auteur love story.

The black comedy, which opened the 27th annual Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois Wednesday night and will be released Friday, is directed by Érik Canuel and stars stand-up comic/actor Patrick Huard as a messed-up loner who desperately wants to have sex with his sister, a soft-porn TV star, played by Julie LeBreton.

At its heart, Cadavres, which is aimed at 18-35-year-old males, is about the power of love, says Pierre Gendron, who produced the film with Christian Larouche, formerly of Christal Films. ‘We are not taking ourselves too seriously with this film, but there is a message of hope. If you are in love you are lucky,’ says Gendron.

The producer finds two of the film’s minor characters, homely but in-love drug dealers, particularly inspiring. The pair flush their stash down the toilet and later retrieve it in a septic field, where they merrily frolic and embrace despite being surrounded by feces. ‘That’s real love. They are just happy to be together,’ says the producer. The couple are ultimately executed in the bathtub.

Likely because media darlings Canuel and Huard have been talking up the film’s in-your-face sex and blood all week, demand to attend the premiere was so high the Rendez-vous screened Cadavres at two cinemas, rather than one as originally planned. ‘A Canuel/Huard film is an event in this province,’ says Gendron, adding that the crowd’s response was good.

Seville pumped $500,000 into the film’s release, says the company’s co-president David Reckziegel, but adds that it is ‘not for everybody.’

Although its target market — young men — is narrow, the distributor believes that Cadavres’ sex, violence and highly stylized look illustrates how Quebec filmmakers and their audiences are maturing: ‘Quebec film went through a period of telling certain kinds of stories. But the first stories are always easier. Now people are digging deeper,’ says Reckziegel.

Cadavres is one of a number of 2009 releases that the industry hopes will revive the homegrown film market. According to box-office tracker Cineac, ticket sales for Quebec films have dropped by half since 2005, when C.R.A.Z.Y., Maurice Richard and Les Boys 4 charmed the province and made-in-Quebec flicks accounted for a record 18.2% of overall ticket sales. In 2008, that number fell to 9.3% from 10.7% in 2007, and 11.7% in 2006.

But things are already looking brighter. Alliance Vivafilm’s Polytechnique has already done well at the box office, and TVA Films has high expectations for its upcoming release Dédé à travers les brumes, the life story of an immensely popular Quebec rock singer, out in March. Alliance Vivafilm is counting on its main summer release De père en flic, a comedy featuring the popular Michel Côté (Cruising Bar) and hot comedian Louis-José Houde.

Rendez vous ends Feb. 28 with another world premiere — the feature documentary Les petits géants, directed by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette and Émile Poulx-Cloutier. The film follows five children in Grades 5 and 6 who are performing in Verdi’s classic opera A Masked Ball.