Ulysse, souviens-toi!

Gangster and deadbeat dad, Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), embarks on an unusual journey through his home, in a noir ghost story that draws on Homer's Odyssey.

Guy Maddin is an unusual man, whose styles are interesting and some would say unique. Keep in mind this is a man who, ten years prior, made "The Heart of the World" (2000) in the style of Russian constructivism. And it worked.

This time around, there is a cheesy, low budget feel with less-than-stellar acting, at least at the beginning. (The low budget look may be because Maddin shot Keyhole digitally rather than his usual method of shooting on 16mm or Super-8mm.) Things get better as they go, especially once the acting chops of Isabella Rossellini and Udo Kier are brought into the picture.

Ebert wrote, "Keyhole plays like a fever dream using the elements of film noir but restlessly rearranging them in an attempt to force sense out of them. You have the elements lined up against the wall, and in some mercurial way, they slip free and attack you from behind." Wow. Those are some words, Roger. Not sure exactly what you mean, but mysteriously such a review fits this film nicely.

Stumbling out of the theater, my friend said in a small voice, "I think that was even stranger than Hourglass Sanatorium".

This one follows a cast of characters comprising a family whose given names are evocative of literary figures, ways of being, and pretty objects. Unsurprisingly, the character Ulysses is on a rambling quest to find something that may not exist at all -- an adumbrate vision of his wife Hyacinth. Oh, and all he has to do is make it from the first floor of his house to the third.

March (crawl, duck, run) behind them while they are sometimes nude, scraping at things, or shaking dice (there's a joke about masturbation in here somewhere), navigating their bilious house that has a ton of locked doors and a mess of floating dust particles, which -- I'm going out on a limb -- are probably metaphor for the thickness of whatever it is that came between them.

My favorite thematic preoccupation lies in Maddin's stirring portrayal of the fuzzy line between life and death, with figures floating in and out of the frame (and existence), incorporating themselves into deadly vanishing-vignettes that keep recurring, and, corporeal, positioning themselves in zones of the house and grounds that Maddin somehow conveys to the audience are "dead space".

While I'm definitely a Maddin fan, make no mistake about that, and I recognize his hat tips to Lynch and Von Trier and Harmony Korine, and I love any movie with Udo Kier in it, clearly this is a take-the-tax-grant and run flick.

Meanwhile, I'm going to strip naked and go to the antique mall and make some foggy black and white videos for YouTube and see which government wants to bankroll me for more! The 3 rating is strictly for how well this stacks up with other Maddin predecessors. The uninitiated, unless chemically altered, would probably strain to give it a zero.

IMDb here is insisting I go on at length in my review. I'm so glad there is governmental support for the arts, but sometimes it's just a siphon into a drain somewhere. For once, I am going to call this out. I will have to do so extensively, or I won't pass muster for my review length.

I did think some of the bric-a-brac props in the movie were cool. I like to shop antique flea markets myself, and some of the stuff was really prize. OK, I think I have filled up the text buffer to this website's satisfaction.

Gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) has his men shoot their way into a home surrounded by police. Big Ed is second-in-command and he tells the dead to walk out. There is a bound and gagged man. The house is haunted. Ulysses has a girl Denny with him who is soaking wet, supposedly drowned and blind. They go in search for his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini). His gang wonders about Ulysses' plans and fight amongst themselves.

It's yet another Guy Maddin experimental film. This is almost watchable as the mystery of what this is truly about holds the audience's attendance. This is a black and white dreamscape or a nightmare. I wonder if Maddin can ever use his outlandish imagery in a more conventional movie. The production is relatively simple. There are a couple of interesting actors here. Like a lot of his movies, Maddin loses me about halfway through.

'Keyhole' is mostly shot in black-and-white... and there my understanding of it ends. The basic plot seems to be about a gangster (Jason Patric) searching for his wife (Isabella Rossellini, still beautiful) who is hiding behind a locked door in a haunted house. For some reason he's dragging along with him a drowned - but talking - young woman and a bound & gagged young man. Meanwhile various other gangsters and ghosts roam about the place to no great effect. It's hard to judge the actors' performances because they're placed in such an unreal situation and are acting from such a bizarre script. To paraphrase London Mayor Boris Johnson, it goes 'zoink' off the arty-farty register. Fans of fat old man nudity will love it, unfortunately.