Vive le Maddin: Winnipeg filmmaker a hit in Paris

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Guy Maddin (WAYNE GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA / ARCHIVES)

PARIS -- Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin, whose career is as rich with awards and critical acclaim as it is devoid of a mainstream commercial breakthrough, struggled this week when asked if something might be changing as a result of his spectacular, multi-faceted leap into one of the world's toughest markets for English-speaking foreign artists.

The director, famous among cinephiles for his dreamlike, grainy, 1920s-style black-and-white films, has triggered widespread media coverage here in numerous major print and electronic media outlets.

The highlight was a full-page spread in celebrity-dominated Paris Match, the glossy equivalent in France of People magazine, under the headline Guy Maddin, le David Lynch Canadien.

A chuckling Maddin, 53, whose first film screening in Paris in 1993 drew about a dozen people, managed to say "probably not" and "maybe it will" without drawing a breath when asked if his success here could be leveraged into something bigger back in North America.

"I've always thought if I just do the best job I can maybe the stars will align and something might sneak into a broader viewing public," he admitted.

Then he just as quickly ends any thought of a sudden change of fortunes. "I don't even allow myself those kinds of daydreams anymore," he said. "If I allow myself to enjoy anything too much it'll be taken away from me."

Despite his nagging doubts, Parisians are flocking to a retrospective of the Winnipeg director's films being played over a three-week period starting October 15 at the Pompidou Centre, one of the world's most famous centres of culture and the arts.

Next door to the Pompidou Centre Maddin's most recent film, My Winnipeg (re-titled Winnipeg Mon Amour here), opened Wednesday in one of two Paris movie theatres.

My Winnipeg is a 2007 documentary that mixes historical fact, childhood memories both real and imagined and myths in a humorous film that seems to meld Igmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal with Michael Moore's Roger & Me.

"I really liked it," said Florence Gilbert, 23, as she left the theatre with three other friends, all students, who learned about the film a day earlier thanks to a review in Le Monde. "I thought it was funny, really impressive, and really beautiful."

Maddin's tour de force in Paris, though, occurred Monday before a full house at the historic 800-seat Odeon Theatre, one of France's five national theatres that was inaugurated in 1782 by Marie-Antoinette.

The 800 audience members paid up to $50 a ticket to see a remarkable version of his 2006 silent film Brand Upon The Brain!

The show included an orchestra, an opera singer, and a three-person audio effects team providing the sounds for everything from kissing to footsteps to bubbly laboratory experiments.

Providing narration in perfect French was Isabella Rossellini, the international film star, whose role as Maddin's "muse" has helped expand the director's reach since she starred in his 2003 film The Saddest Music in the World.

The show earned a long and powerful ovation that left Maddin glowing. "I've always felt a connection with the French audience long before I even set foot in France or made a movie," Maddin told Canwest News Service before heading into a post-show reception.

Fabrice Leroy, a partner with the French film company E.D. Distribution, said Rossellini's involvement both past and present was crucial in opening the door to this autumn's success.

He said Maddin always received rave reviews, but there was a poor turnout until The Saddest Music in the World.

"And the fact that Isabella was in the film assured people. They said, 'Okay, we can go.' And it was very successful."

Maddin and his distributors spent almost three years preparing the round for this autumn's commercial release of My Winnipeg. The Monday show at the Odeon Theatre was enormously costly, he said, but Maddin got a break when the Paris Autumn Festival agreed to be a sponsor.

The jury remains out on whether Maddin can draw big crowds from the non-cinophile crowd. A healthy 276 Parisians turned out on a rainy Wednesday to see the film in both theatres, and a ticket-taker said she expects much bigger crowds on the weekend.

"Everybody is telling us, it's amazing, it's a breakthrough for Guy," said Leroy of the attention their client is getting. "But we're saying, 'Let's wait and see if it has an effect.'"

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 24, 2009 C8