Film review: My Winnipeg

Published on Thursday 17 July 2008 20:37

MY WINNIPEG (15) **** DIRECTED BY: GUY MADDIN STARRING: DARCY FEHR, ANN SAVAGE

IN THE past I've been ambivalent about Canadian maverick Guy Maddin's self-conscious use of silent cinema techniques (sepia cinematography, edge blurs, intertitles) in his films. Though striking to look at, there didn't seem to be much more to the likes of The Saddest Music in the World and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary than their retro trimmings.

With My Winnipeg, however, he deploys the same tricks to more satisfying effect, serving up a weird and wonderful film that works both as a cinematic memoir and as a docu-history of the city that shaped him. Maddin spent his childhood in Winnipeg immersed in old movies so it's only natural this would influence not only the memories he has of his upbringing and of his hometown, but also the way he represents them on film.

Here he casts 1940s Hollywood femme fatale Ann Savage to play his mother in reconstructions of his home life and takes us on monochrome tours of the city to convey the mythical secret history that his narration informs us has helped characterise the city and its inhabitants.

What emerges is by turns a funny, angry and melancholic portrait of the strange and powerful hold a hometown can have on someone.