The Saddest Music in the World
Alternative cinema with a heavenly performance from
Isabella Rossellini as Lady Port-Huntly, a beer baroness who, at the
height of the Great Depression announces a global contest to find the
world�s saddest tune in a darkly comic �dreamy dizzy musical.�
This is Canada so there�s no Prohibition. It would be giving away
too much to reveal what Lady Port-Huntly is missing. Musicians from across
the world - Mexican mariachi, African drummers, Scots pipers - manage to
travel to Winnipeg to play their mournful tunes in the hope of winning a
$25,000 prize. Failed Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney)
brings his painfully forgetful girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Madeiros)
home to his native city to be the US entrant. The family reunion in which
he finds himself caught up, turns out to be as tangled and hazardous as
the contest itself. In the end the twists of fate and a horrendous fire
sort things out one way or another for the sad characters who are the
contestants and the citizens of 1933 Winnipeg, saddest city on Earth.
It�s certainly no Hollywood musical!
The Canadian director is Guy Maddin ( Twilight of
the Ice Nymphs / The Heart of the World / Archangel / Tales from the Gimli
Hospital ), three of his bizarre short films are on the dvd too. It is
based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro whom we British know
well for �The Remains of the Day� .
Good news: it�s now just �7.99 from play.com
This film is inspired madness of the first order. You won�t forget those
beer-filled glass legs!
�RKW from the Spring 2006 edition of O-to-K