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'Winnipeg' is a gem

By Mina Hochberg

3 stars In "My Winnipeg," director Guy Maddin perfectly distills that distinct strain of love/hate affection that can only be provoked by one's hometown and all the family and local lore tied to it. Maddin's hometown, as the title indicates, is Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the director has spent his entire life. The film is a haunting, phantasmagoric yet hilarious ode to Winnipeg, a spoken-word diatribe that simmers both with impotent resentment and blind affection.

Maddin's poem, which is essentially what this 80-minute film is, eddies around memory and myth with alluring agitation as Maddin traces his childhood to the house where he grew up, fronted by a salon owned by his mother. He also weaves somnambulantly through Winnipeg legend, such as a stable of race horses that froze to death in a river and became a horsicle tourist attraction. It's one, long, comically brooding meditation on the character of home, and the difficulty of rousing oneself out of settled complacency in order to say goodbye to it all.

My Winnipeg Directed by Guy Maddin