In the lead up to the 7th Canadian Film Festival in Australia (August 2012), join us as we countdown the Top 100 Canadian Films of the past 30 years. We'll be posting one film a day leading up to Canada Day on July 1st 2012. Do you agree with our team favourites? Let us know your thoughts!
A silent-movie fetishist with Freudian preoccupations and melodramatic tendencies, Guy Maddin's distinctive style borrows from the silent era, film noir and surrealism. It is not just uniquely Canadian, it’s unique.
The episodic story centres around a successful but weak-willed hockey player named Guy Maddin, whose aunt runs a beauty salon that doubles as both an abortion clinic and a bordello. This is where he takes his pregnant girlfriend when he finds he is unable to deal with parenthood. It’s also where he falls madly in love with the mysterious Meta.
In this hall of mirrors unfolds a convoluted oedipal melodrama in which masochistic fantasies, sexual repression and familial betrayals are whipped to a fever pitch.
Originally designed as installation art in which 10 chapters were viewed through peepholes, Cowards Bend the Knee was then transformed into a feature film in which voyeurism plays a key part. Shot on black and white super 8mm film, Cowards Bend the Knee is darkly lit like a German expressionist film and looks like it’s been dug up from the dusty vaults of a forgotten cinematheque.
The result is darkly humorous and fabulously strange, a technical wonder bursting at the seams with unbridled imagination. Surrender to its perverse logic, hypnotic rhythms and sweaty-palmed urges and you’ll experience something akin to a cinematic wet dream.
- Matt Ravier
“Abortion, incest, infidelity, revenge, and hockey collide at a fever pitch, juxtaposed with such frantic energy that they're pushed to the level of high comedy, funniest at its most dramatic.” – The A.V. Club
To see the other films in the countdown so far, click here.