THE FORBIDDEN ROOM Cinema's Legacy

If a movie could dream, it might look something like THE FORBIDDEN ROOM. Canadian auteur Guy Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson invite audiences to glimpse what fills the human interior: urges, repressed memories, nightmares and dreams-within-dreams. The film is a pure manifestation of Maddin’s distinctive cinephile delirium tremens. An international cast including Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier and Charlotte Rampling incarnates the obsessives trapped inside an oneiric labyrinth. Maddin and his team shot on digital cameras, then painstakingly converted the footage to resemble silent-era hand-tinted film color techniques. Expressionist, pulp, Kuleshov and camp — the Canadian filmmaker once again alchemizes his influences into the creation of a wholly original work. – Gillian Horvat