Director Guy Maddin is the maestro from Manitoba, a demented genius who refuses to quit Canada’s most desolate city despite the international acclaim he’s found with curios like The Saddest Music In The World. This fabulous memoir explains why it’s so hard for him to escape. As far from a conventional travelogue as it’s possible to get, this is a mock-reverie in lustrous monochrome, full of surreal embellishments (lovers skate on ice ponds between the heads of frozen horses) and whimsical conceits (our narrator remarks on the unusually high incidence of sleepwalking in his city). But the tongue-in-cheek tone is partly a defence mechanism; casting erstwhile femme fatale Ann Savage (Detour) as his mom isn’t exactly a compliment. Hypnotic and very funny, this is truly one of a kind.
