My Winnipeg 2007

Guy Maddin's portrait of his native city is intensely idiosyncratic and hilariously unreliable, constructed around his apparently doomed imperative to escape the place, and with it his mother. It was commissioned by the Documentary Channel, but that's where any resemblance to documentary as we know it ends. His Winnipeg is a wintry noir metropolis, refracted through his patented array of antique optical techniques and glimpsed from the window of a train that's hurtling out of town, but caught in a constant loop. Dredging the fetid depths of his subconscious, he takes us back to the sensual mayhem of his mother's hairdressing salon, the macho world of ice hockey and the locker rooms of the city's subterranean pools. Rococo re-enactments cast 40s femme fatale Anne Savage as the frightful mother. The scourge of developers, Maddin rails against the destruction of its great buildings, loathing the city fathers with murderous relish. — BG