Gangster and deadbeat dad, Ulysses Pick, embarks on an unusual journey through his home.
Keyhole is an enchantment of chiaroscuro compositions which float across the screen like a dream; it’s an acquired taste but pure cinema nevertheless.
It's so dreamily mesmerising, it often feels as if you've nodded off into a dream and woken up again, minutes later. But Maddin's monochrome madness is painstakingly wrought, a restless montage of strange, disturbing, inventive images, apparently channelled from both the subconscious or the history of cinema.
If I could explain what happens in this retro-noirish fantasia on a gangster picture I would, but it would take about another 15 viewings to do so.
Strangled by its own nostalgic mad love.
Keyhole is a genuine curiosity, rather less interesting perhaps than I've made it sound, and an example of that narrow sub-genre, whimsical noir.
Though self-referential to a fault, the deadpan humour, frayed logic and monochrome dazzle cast their own richly peculiar spell.
A bravura journey into a noirish nightmare world and a lock that even paid-up Maddinites won’t be able to pick on a single viewing.
Guy Maddin
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee from Friday September 21, 2012, until Thursday September 27, 2012. More info: www.dca.org.uk
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