The Forbidden Room, film review: so rich and strange that it's hard to digest

This is Canadian visionary Guy Maddin’s exuberant exercise in high kitsch

Strange ecstasies: Canadian visionary Guy Maddin’s exuberant exercise in high kitsch, ‘The Forbidden Room’

Guy Maddin, 119 mins Starring: Roy Dupuis, Louis Negin, Geraldine Chaplin

The Canadian director Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) is a true cinematic visionary whose work plays in ingenious fashion with ideas and motifs from silent film. He uses strange lenses, intertitles, chiaroscuro lighting and sepia. In small doses, his work is delightful but at feature length, it is so rich and strange that it can be hard to fathom or digest.

The Forbidden Room is typical Maddin. It includes scenes set in a submarine that play like something out of Jules Verne, a bizarre introduction in which an old man gives lessons on how to take a bath, and sequences involving lumberjacks and wolf men.

It’s an exercise in high kitsch which enraptures at first, but becomes increasingly enervating the longer it lasts.

Guy Maddin, 119 mins Starring: Roy Dupuis, Louis Negin, Geraldine Chaplin