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Keyhole, 2011
A gangster named Ulysses (Jason Patric) brings his gang into his old home, with a drowned young woman named Denny (Brooke Palsson) and a bound hostage (David Wontner) in tow. Ulysses wanders the home with the somehow revived young woman, encountering various strange memories as he searches for his wife, Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini).
I've seen a lot of Guy Maddin's films at this point, and I've enjoyed them quite a bit. In the films I've liked the most---My Winnipeg and Brand Upon the Brain--themes of parents and children and seemingly personal memories have played a big part in the narrative.
Keyhole feels less personal than Maddin's other films, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. There's a lot more weirdness and overt comedy to it ("That penis is getting dusty", Ulysses observes about a wall-mounted penis in a hallway. There's a running gag about character's opening a door to find the ghost of one of Ulysses's sons masturbating while playing Yahtzee, then simply closing the door). The way that death seems to be suspended in the house is done in a fun way, and we are clued in with an early scene where one of the gangsters tells everyone to line up "If you're dead, face the wall." He then excuses the two dead men, telling them as they leave that the police will see to it that they find their way to the morgue.
Patric proves to be a solid central character, and he's well matched by Rossellini's supporting turn as the resentful Hyacinth. All of the actors do a good job of navigating the dialogue and finding the right tone for the strangeness, not letting their characters get lost in a mess of quirks which could have been an easy downfall of the film.
There is, of course, the usual Maddin sex/kink/queer vibe to everything, and I found it very charming. There's something refreshing about a film where nudity and sexy framing is applied with an egalitarian spirit, while at the same time there's an old-fashioned vibe to the sexual content as if the images were pulled from old timey erotica (like a shot of the bound hostage leaning against the edge of the bathtub). It helps that the humor is layered in with the sexual content, such as in a sequence where a regular sized bathtub somehow seems poised to accommodate three adults.
If you aren't a fan of Maddin's stuff, I don't think that this is the film to convert you. At the same time I thought it was a fun mesh of horror, fantasy, comedy, and drama. If you do like Maddin's stuff, this isn't necessarily his best but definitely worth watching.
Keyhole, 2011
A gangster named Ulysses (Jason Patric) brings his gang into his old home, with a drowned young woman named Denny (Brooke Palsson) and a bound hostage (David Wontner) in tow. Ulysses wanders the home with the somehow revived young woman, encountering various strange memories as he searches for his wife, Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini).
I've seen a lot of Guy Maddin's films at this point, and I've enjoyed them quite a bit. In the films I've liked the most---My Winnipeg and Brand Upon the Brain--themes of parents and children and seemingly personal memories have played a big part in the narrative.
Keyhole feels less personal than Maddin's other films, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. There's a lot more weirdness and overt comedy to it ("That penis is getting dusty", Ulysses observes about a wall-mounted penis in a hallway. There's a running gag about character's opening a door to find the ghost of one of Ulysses's sons masturbating while playing Yahtzee, then simply closing the door). The way that death seems to be suspended in the house is done in a fun way, and we are clued in with an early scene where one of the gangsters tells everyone to line up "If you're dead, face the wall." He then excuses the two dead men, telling them as they leave that the police will see to it that they find their way to the morgue.
Patric proves to be a solid central character, and he's well matched by Rossellini's supporting turn as the resentful Hyacinth. All of the actors do a good job of navigating the dialogue and finding the right tone for the strangeness, not letting their characters get lost in a mess of quirks which could have been an easy downfall of the film.
There is, of course, the usual Maddin sex/kink/queer vibe to everything, and I found it very charming. There's something refreshing about a film where nudity and sexy framing is applied with an egalitarian spirit, while at the same time there's an old-fashioned vibe to the sexual content as if the images were pulled from old timey erotica (like a shot of the bound hostage leaning against the edge of the bathtub). It helps that the humor is layered in with the sexual content, such as in a sequence where a regular sized bathtub somehow seems poised to accommodate three adults.
If you aren't a fan of Maddin's stuff, I don't think that this is the film to convert you. At the same time I thought it was a fun mesh of horror, fantasy, comedy, and drama. If you do like Maddin's stuff, this isn't necessarily his best but definitely worth watching.