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1997,
Nova Scotia, 91 minutes
Director:
Thom Fitzgerald
British poet Philip Larkin's famous line "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." could serve as a tag line for Thom Fitzgerald's The Hanging Garden, a sumptuous and darkly comic romp through a terrain that could be best described as Maritime Gothic-Lite. Sweeet William (Chris Leavins), a young gay man, returns to his rural Nova Scotian home on the day of his sister's wedding after a bitter ten-year absence. While reconnecting with his family - including guilt-ridden mom Iris (Seana McKenna), drunken dad Mac (Peter MacNeill) and a devout Catholic grandmother battling dementia - William also connects, quite literally, with the ghosts of his past. Past and present blend seamlessly together. William's boyhood self flits in and out of rooms, while his 350-pound teenage self haunts his father's cherished garden. William comes face to face with a twisted family secret that's the outcome of a profoundly cruel and ignorant, albeit well-intentioned, act of his mother's a decade ago. From Chris Leavins's quietly assured Sweet William to acclaimed New Zealand actress Kerry Fox's (An Angel at My Table, Shallow Grave) delightful, tough-talking older sister Rosemary to Ashley MacIsacc's cameo as the fiddler at Rosemary's wedding, the performances crackle with authenticity. The casting is particularly adroit - Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) is a perfect match as the teenage Rosemary and newcomer Troy Veinotte, who's from rural Nova Scotia, is heartbreaking as the sexually awakening, overweight teenage William. The Hanging Garden's robust colour palette and sophisticated floral metaphor add to its strong visual style. Fitzgerald's gifts as an experimental filmmaker and satisfying storyteller combine to create an exuberant and moving contemporary fable that is half slice-of-life drama, half surrealist fantasy, and one hundred percent human. John
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