I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)

This film was made by artless people - artless writer(s), artless actors, artless cinematographer(s), artless sound, costumes, editor(s), and everything else and all other film folx who should know better.The only attraction was Sheila McCarthy's hair. I watched it to the end, ever hopeful that this piece if incompetent film-making would have some redeeming feature(s). NONE found. It's simply an amateurish PoS.I do not understand the positive reviews that others have given, nor the overall high score.Perhaps the offbeat, somewhat mystical/fanciful nature displayed from the outset held up for those who liked this film. It certainly did not for me.

Good things often come in surprisingly small packages, and this Canadian export is a very small thing indeed: a low budget sleeper describing the private world of Polly Vandersma, the 'organizationally impaired' Person Friday and part-time assistant for the curator of a high-brow Toronto art gallery. Painfully shy, prone to daydreams and distraction, socially inept and insecure, Polly is a simple person attracted to what she calls 'art things': obscure painting, modern architecture, the oblique language of intellectuals. It's a world she's not well equipped for (to say the least), and after developing an innocent crush on her curator boss she learns the hard way exactly how cold the world of 'art things' can be. Her story is both poignant and funny, built around the framing device of Polly's odd, confessional video diary, in which she recounts the one, glorious moment in her otherwise negligible life when she broke free of her shell. But the real secret behind the fragile charm of the movie is Sheila McCarthy's disarming star performance, capturing all of Polly's clumsy optimism and curiosity. Originally shown with 'Paradiso', a long (long) animated wet dream from the Age of Aquarius.

Wow. There are four rather fine things in this, and one that ruins it all.First the good. The key role is perfectly realized. Though the supporting actors and the way things are staged are mundane, this actress and the writer/directer created someone memorable. This was Napoleon Dynamite before he was cool.While dialog and pacing are uneven, the music isn't. It is uniformly apt. The performance and the music alone are just about enough to sustain the thing until the end.And there's one brilliant piece of stagecraft. Some paintings figure in the plot. These paintings have impressed our heroine who -- it is made explicit -- is our narrator. She describes them as miraculous and when they are shown, they are blank, white glowing rectangles. Until this point, the imaginary and real segments are clearly distinguished, and when we see this clever trick, we move forward on our chair, waiting for what is next.And the final great thing is the way the thing is structured. In several ways, we are told that this is an artwork that is about artwork and the "message" is both in the story and how the story is told: there are matters of authorship and genuineness; a bit about filming and being filmed; other bits about reality and representations of reality. Hey, we see, this is one smart woman behind this. And we lean ever more forward in the chair, ready to leap.And then the end hits us with such a banal notion that we are gobsmacked back. Hey! Is that all? All that energy and cleverness to tell us something Art Linkletter or Reader's Digest could (and does)? Jees.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Sheila McCarthy shines in this exploration of the imagination, the artist and the self.It is one of my top ten films of all time because of its originality and ,of course, McCarthy's offbeat and touching performance. She creates something truly original that has not been matched in a female comedic performance since.Direction is crisp, unexpected and magical. One can see why it was given a standing ovation at Cannes.It is one of the few films that can me on a pure emotional level..appealing to the misunderstood individual.Anyone who has felt like they don't fit in will love this movie. Be sure to watch the closing credits to the end.Now On DVD with Rozema's commentary.