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MY WINNIPEG
Conceived & Directed by Guy Maddin
Produced by Jody Shapiro and Phyllis Laing
Director of photography, Shapiro
Edited by John Gurdebeke
Released by IFC Films
Canada. 80 min. Not Rated
With Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage, Amy Stewart, Louis Negin, Brendan Cade, Wesley Cade & Fred Dunsmore

For the uninitiated, this guided tour of Guy Maddin’s hometown is an expedient entry into the filmmaker’s mindset, with its hardboiled camp, gloriously grainy black-and-white cinematography, delirious psychodrama, and forbidden lust. His hypnotic and sardonic narration almost overshadows the beautifully bizarre images in what is essentially one long reminiscence.

Darcy Fehr stands in for Maddin, who’s leaving town, he swears, for good. The entire film is his exploration on what’s keeping him in “snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg.” Along with the city’s fascinating and secretive history (if you were to believe Maddin completely), he re-creates his family’s history with the ripest of noir dialogue. Readers of Film Comment will already be aware of the director’s fondness for ’40s B-movies, so in an inspired and logical piece of casting, Ann Savage (the femme fatale of 1945’s Detour) plays his formidable, ever-watchful mother. “Never underestimate the tenacity of a Winnipeg mother,” he warns. The family Chihuahua, Toby, is played by Spanky, a pug belonging to Maddin’s ex-girlfriend.

Among the tour’s highlights, the most juvenile stand out – Academy of St. Mary’s, AKA Academy of the Ultravixens, the clandestine Golden Boy Pageant, and a visit to the old public swimming pool, which segues to the boyhood incident Maddin calls “Dance of the Hairless Boners.” Hallucinatory from beginning to end, the fantastical documentary challenges the viewer to distinguish the archival footage – like that of the 1919 general strike – from what Maddin has dreamed up.

Poignancy might be the last thing you’d expect from this film, a loopy love letter to the city’s faded downtown and its soon-to-be demolished hockey rink, where Maddin takes a ceremonial last piss before its destruction. The city’s new arena, which does look like a “zombie in a cheap suit,” was constructed with the all-important luxury boxes in mind. The film could have equally been called The Last Hockey Game.
Kent Turner
June 13, 2008