Review of Keyhole (2011) by Walter M — 14 Jun 2013

"Keyhole" starts with the police cornering a gang of criminals in a house on a rainy night. Taking charge, Big Ed(Daniel Enright) separates the dead from the living, sending the former out to be taken care of. When Ulysses(Jason Patric), the boss, finally puts in an appearance, he takes care to get warm clothes for Denny(Brooke Palsson). He is also wondering about the state of his wife Hyacinth(Isabella Rossellini). So, he takes Denny and a hostage upstairs with him.

If I was being unusually silly, I would say a lot of the anger at "The Artist" winning so many Academy Awards was due to the continual snubs of Guy Maddin's films. In any case, with his latest film, the partially successful "Keyhole," he moves things ahead by a couple of decades to incorporate every kind of genre popular in the 40's, short of musical, making the formerly implicit explicit in this psychosexual noir funhouse and actually manages to connect a good deal of the dots. And Maddin has the right lead actor in Jason Patric who not only has the requisite square jaw but also the ability to deal with every bit of weirdness thrown his way. That does not include the references to 'The Odyssey.'(Yes, there is a Cyclops. No, you do not want to know.) Now, if someone could just explain the naked old guy in chains.