One of our last stubborn avant gardists/delightful weirdos, Canadian film maker Guy Maddin has made a new film. It’s a little bit Ulysses and a little bit Odyssey trapped in a house with old-timey gangsters, Isabella Rossellini and possibly a drowned dead girl being fucked to life. Possibly.
It’s uh… a little bit confusing. Also, Udo Kier. Also, Kids In The Hall‘s Kevin McDonald WTF.
A gangster and deadbeat father, Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), returns home after a long absence. He is toting two teenagers: a drowned girl, Denny, who has mysteriously returned to life; and a bound-and-gagged hostage, who is actually his own teenage son, Manners. Confused Ulysses doesn’t recognize his own son, but he feels with increasing conviction he must make an indoor odyssey from the back door of his home all the way up, one room at a time, to the marriage bedroom where his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) awaits.
Nerds will complain that it’s too digital-looking this time, which has reduced his anachronistic allure some. <mock outrage>Oh no! He’s doing something different!</mock outrage>.
For the orthodox Maddin fan: There’s always the phantasmagoric, canabalistic, teen-lesbianistic, grainy grainy 8mm Brand Upon the Brain!
