A Winter Tan

Lit professor and adventurer Maryse Holder was an aspiring novelist who, instead of writing, fired salvos from the front lines of the sexual revolution. Like a latter-day Malcolm Lowry, Holder found self-knowledge through her own self-destruction in Mexico, where she was murdered while on a bender (drugs, booze, sex - you name it) in 1978.

While Holder's posthumously published collection of letters, Give Sorrow Words, is not quite the literary caliber of Under the Volcano, it shocks with the acutely observed, scandalous wisdom of a decadent who lived life most passionately when she embraced death.

These letters are the basis of the brooding and extraordinary A Winter Tan, which may very well be the first epistolary movie.

As Holder, actress Jackie Burroughs (who, with four fellow Canadians, co- directed this unforgettable film) pours out Holder's 180-proof letters straight, no chaser. A sinewy androgyne with leathery skin and a raspy whine, Burroughs is so intense that she's almost impossible to look at.

Paradoxically, it's her intensity - call it raw nerve or exposed nerve or anything you like - that makes it impossible to look away. As Holder, Burroughs spends the movie engaging the camera as though it were her best friend to whom she's writing, talking of her appetites - for Mexican men, resort scenery, alcohol. Frequently she indulges them. She seizes male prerogatives - and expects to be punished for them because she's a woman.

Rarely have an actress and her material been so dynamically matched.

Good direction, acting, casting, photography and story line.

Pluses: Deals well with midlife crisis of a Canadian feminist. Honest. The insecurity and despair of this woman is brought home to the viewer in a very realistic manner. Her alcoholism issue is dealt with sensitively. This is a woman who is well past her prime with regard to looks as perceived by the average young male, but still needs to satisfy her needs given the opportunity.

Minuses: Maryse Holder's birth/death dates were 1940 and 1977, making her about 37 at time of death. Jackie Burroughs was born in 1938 and shot the film in 1987, making her about 49 at time of filming. So there is a 12 year age discrepancy between real-life subject and actress. The fact of Holder's murder is mentioned very quickly as her Canadian friend reads a letter. The details of the murder are withheld from the audience entirely, leaving the viewer guessing. In a brief search of material available via the internet, I found that Holder had been murdered by one of her Mexican dates, but no details were available.

Overall: If you want a film depicting hot romance or sex with beautiful people, you'll have to go somewhere else. Maybe that was reviewer 'storytym's problem. This is a film about real life, a real person. It is believable and very well done.

This may be the perfect movie for neurotic, masochistic women, recounting one self-indulgent writer's "vacation from feminism" in sunny Mexico, where the search for some clue to her identity leads only to a succession of virile Mexican boys half her age. Canadian actress Jackie Burroughs portrays expatriate New Yorker Maryse Holder by quoting her explicit, confessional letters in beatnik monologues spoken directly to the camera (a random sample: "cycles of vengeance, cycles of revenge, motorcycles of despair…"), but exactly who this woman is or what she's after is never made clear: is she rebelling against her advancing age, or simply looking for Señor Goodbar? Burroughs can be an intense performer, and the film may well capture the essence of Holder's narcissistic lifestyle, but the sad truth is that she wasn't a particularly talented writer ("vomit seems to be my metaphor", she admits, with stunning candor, at one point), and the film wallows in self-pity and self-importance. Five people, including Burroughs herself, share the director's credit, possibly because no one wanted to take full responsibility for it.

The Canadian film A WINTER TAN predates HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK, but has a similar plot. A woman going through a midlife crisis goes to the tropics to rediscover herself.

It takes place in a warm, sunny place, but it moves like a glacier. A tone-deaf, relentlessly aggravating, horribly written, ludicrously acted, crappily shot, stultifying glacier.

Lured by an inexplicable positive review, I'm one of the forty-three people who paid to see this turd in the theater, and I'd like my seven bucks back. The theater wouldn't give it to me when I, along with most of the audience, walked out midway through. (And I NEVER walk out of movies--in thirty years of serious movie fandom, I have walked out of two movies: This and the horrible late 70s remake of PRISONER OF ZENDA.)

At least Canada has given us some pretty good beers over the years. God knows I drank a ton of them to get rid of the taste of this offal.

A Winter Tan (1987) is a Canadian film written and directed by and starring the great Jackie Burroughs. This is an extraordinary tour-de-force effort in which Burroughs (probably best known as Mother Mucca in the Tales of the City series) portrays Maryse Holden, a college professor and feminist writer. On what she perceives to be her last great hedonist adventure (she's in her late 40s): an extended trip to Mexico. She pursues sex, booze, and drugs and writes diary-like letters back to a friend in New York. Long story short, she's correct in her assumption that this would be her last great splash but not for the reason she thinks.

Burroughs, tall and angular (and 48 at the time) laments (as Holden) her fading looks and tries desperately to get a tan to cover the flaws in her aging skin. She's less able to easily attract men and has to pay them in a few cases. She's obviously too old for the wild disco clubs that cater to youth and because of the booze and drugs starts running afoul of the Mexican police, especially after she's caught with a 14-year-old boy. Grim and gripping, this is a tough movie but in the long final monologue Burroughs delivers a master class in acting ... all in one take. Burroughs won the Canadian Genie Award as best actress.

This film was released on VHS by Kino many decades ago but has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray.