Before I went to see Guy Maddin's latest film, My Winnipeg, I read about it on the BFI website. I read it twice. The review didn't make any sense to me. When I arrived, I read the BFI handout given away at all their screenings. I was confused, and still didn't know what to expect. I had onlybooked the tickets because the poster looked good. Then Guy Maddin appeared and introduced the film. A friendly, avuncular character, he riffed his way easily through the introductory speech, cracking jokes about his aunt and the chance to win tickets to Winnipeg.

Although some of the remarks about the film in the BFI's literature may have been hyperbole, it is a refreshing, surreal and otherworldly film. Something approaching early Lynch in its crazed inventiveness, or Last Year At Marienbad in its dreamlike surreality.

The extended raised-eyebrow exposition details Maddin's attempt to escape Winnipeg through film. This includes recreating his family home, assembling a surrogate family and reenacting episodes from his past. After more improvised lunacy the film gives way to a more conventional travelogue, highlighting architectural crimes like the razing of much-loved buildings, the likes of which are surely a universal experience in a world with real estate prices so high. Sexuality and a bizarre motherly undercurrent swell under the film like the mythical Forks under the Forks that Maddin speaks of. His mother is a looming presence, often projected through windows or on walls. His father less so - he only appears as a dead lump underneath a rug. Maddin's true father was the ice hockey stadium, he says.

It sometimes appears that you are watching the film through the foggy windows of a train from a long time ago. This adds a layer of intrigue and obfuscation to an already hard to pin down production.

Ultimately, but far from inevitably, Maddin is equivocal in his feelings for Winnipeg, retaining a soft spot for the lap that bore him.

Maddin's style and visual conceits are so strong that the Your Winnipeg competition, where the object is to make your own three-minute film about your town, is sure to generate a wealth of entries and ideas.

Universal in its themes yet utterly idiosyncratic in its prosecution, this film would act as a huge inspiration for potential filmmakers everywhere, if they would only get to see it. But I suspect it's a bit leftfield to gain widespread distribution.

Link: Some videos of the film, including the trailer, at IMBd