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1he reality of the 'two solitudes' is all too glaringly obvious in the mutual ignorance displayed
towards each others' films by Quebec filmmakers and all other Canadian filmmakers respec-
tively. On the one hand, most francophones refuse to acknowledge the strong Canadian roots
of a filmmaker like David Cronenberg, whereas in English Canada, the names of Lea Pool,
Andre Forcier or Jean Pierre Lefebvre, all prolific directors, arouse a certain mild interest, but
rarely provoke serious discussion. And what does it mean to talk about a made-in-Canada star
system? Tue major stars of Quebec television can walk the streets ofToronto in total anonymity.
And according to mischievous gossip in Montreal, Halifax or Vancouver even the majority of
English-speaking Canadian actors have exactly the same problem.
Any discussion of Canadian cinema as a whole has to come to grips with this indifference
and with its unsettling effects. We cannot go on ignoring our geographic, cultural and linguistic
situation when we peer down on the work of a filmmaker from the Prairies or the Maritimes
throµgh a Quebec-centered lens. Quebec film critics, myself among them, have focused their
attention on Europe, the United States, and more recently Asia, and show little interest in the
technical evolution of directors like Anne Wheeler, Bruce MacDonald or Michael Jones. Unless
they receive the accolade of prestigious festivals - abroad, if possible - English-Canadian films
cause scarcely a ripple on the screens of Montreal, Quebec's largest city and a solid bastion
of film buffs. But even this bastion has its limits and its likes and dislikes, and is ever more
gravely endangered by the skittishness of distributors, the tyranny of multiplex cinemas and
the financial precariousness of an institution as well-known and universally respected as the
Cinematheque quebecoise.
This context of persistent indifference - albeit punctuated by the odd hurst of enthusiasm
- makes it hard to catch the attention of the cinema-going public, which at the best of times
tends to be a bit fickle, and set in its often deeply entrenched prejudices. And this is why any
movie that manages to break through the barrier of cultural resistance is an honourable excep-
tion. Patricia Rozema's first feature film, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) is surely one of
the rare made-in-Canada films that have made an impression on the Quebec scene. (The title

THE CINEMA OF CANADA 13 7

of the film is taken from Rozema's favorite poem, T. S. Eliot's The Love Song ofJ. Alfred Prufrock;
for a long time the working title of the film was Oh, The Things J've Seen.)
Quebec movie-goers are no different from other Canadians in responding to interna-
tional approval; the triumphant success of Rozema's film abroad did a lot to arouse interest at
home. Even the characters in the film refer to Canadian artists' obsession with gaining recogni-
tion elsewhere. Tue work of the artist on display in the art gallery which is the main setting of
the film has value only insofar as 'New York is crazy about him'.
Polly Vandersma (Sheila McCarthy) is an incompetent Girl Fridaywho gets a job as secre-
tary in the art gallery, Tue Church Gallery, run by Gabrielle St Peres (Faule Baillg.rgeon). Moody;
shy, awkward and more or less sexless, Polly is captivated by her sophisticated boss, whom she
calls 'The Curator'. Naturally curious, not to say nosey, with or without her camera, Polly uncov-
ers other facets of Gabrielle's personality: her past relationships with various men; another rela-
tionship, more or less over, with Marie Joseph, an artist (Ann-Marie MacDonald); her disap-
pointed creative aspirations; and finally her intransigence and her duplicity. For Polly thinks
that the paintings in Gabrielle's chic apartment - vast canvases of white light like great television
screens - are her boss's work. Tue night after Gabrielle's birthday party, she steals one and hangs
it in the gallery where it receives a rave review from an art critic - to Gabrielle's discomfort,
since Polly acted without consulting her. Tue paintings are actually by Marie Joseph.
It is at this point that the suggestion of contempt creeps into the love story, when Polly,
using a pseudonym, sends to the gallery a random selection of the photos she has taken in her
wanderings. Gabrielle, who naturally does not know the true identity of the artist, pronounces
them 'trite'. This blow is soon followed by another, more difficult for Polly to take, when she
discovers that the paintings are by Marie Joseph. Since Gabrielle has the greater cachet in the
art world, the fraud nets them a tidy sum. Hidden in the dim light under a bench in the gallery,
and revealed by the luminosity of the canvases that are being unpacked by Gabrielle and Marie
Joseph, Polly hurls herself in fury at her boss, and flees from the scene with her video-camera
containing the record of this decisive encounter. Until Gabrielle and Marie Joseph turn up at
her door, a moment when reality finally catches up with Polly after a ninety-minute escapade in
her life, moving between memories (the representation ofher meeting with Gabrielle), dreams
(her fantasies which recur four times throughout the film when she imagines she is wealthy,
elegant, learned, and so on) and confession (the video segment).
Characters dressed in period costume, special effects (Sheila McCarthy flying across the
Toronto sky or hanging on to skyscrapers), colour (Polly's recent past) alternating with black
138 24 FRAMES
and white (her dreams, with the exception of the one when, after taking her vengeance on
Gabrielle, she pictures herself as an orchestral conductor - in Technicolor) and with video
tape (the depressing reality ofbeing yet again an out-of-work secretary), all kinds of small but
engaging and even outrageous details give a certain flair to the film which was shot in 23 days
on a budget of $350,000. There are no big names connected with the production - unless you
count (for French-speaking audiences) the presence of Faule Baillargeon. Patricia Rozema had
to struggle to get funding for her first feature and to overcome the nervousness of distributors,
so she could hardly have imagined that her film would be selected for the prestigious direc-
tors' fortnight at Cannes. Not only did her career get a boost from this showcase presenta-
tion and from the Prix de la Jeunesse, but the international exposure was the starting point
for what some have called the 'Ontario New Wave' and the 'Renaissance of English-Canadian
cinema'. Together with other directors like Peter Mettler (The Top of His Head (1989)), Bruce
MacDonald (Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991)), and above all Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing
(1987), The Adjuster (1991), and so on) whose common influences are obvious (mix of film and
video; repressed sexuality; dubious identities; problems of communicating), Patricia Rozema
pushed a breath of fresh air into a film industry that was succumbing to general indifference
and was being swallowed up into generic N orth American, as if the main feature of Canadian
specificity was to be imperceptible.
How is it possible to recognise a film as Canadian, even when it is coasting on a wave
dubbed 'new'? What gives I've Heard the Mermaids Singinga particularly 'Canadian' identity and
label when its poetry, its rhythms and its hurnour, as they are revealed through the character of
Polly, have their origins well beyond the Canada's three coasts? Even Quebec movie-goers who
tend to look towards the south rather than towards the east or west set aside their prejudices
to join the ranks of the fans of this lonely orphan, whose employers see her as 'organisationally
impaired' and seem to give her a job merely out of charity. Some people have compared Polly to
the character played by Melanie Griffith in Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988); one has her head
in the clouds (quite literally) and has no particular ambitions for her future, while the other has
her feet firmly planted on the ground, all the while making a rapid ascent up the ladder of the
firm she is working for.
Tue English-Canadian 'New Wave mentioned above was by no means made up of the
kinds of former film critics and sons of well-heeled families that gave such a dramatic jolt to
the cinematic world in Paris in the 1950s. Their Canadian counterparts were the offspring of
immigrants - Rozerna comes from a Dutch family who settled in Canada after World War
THE CINEMA OF CANADA 139
 Two - and came from a background in television; they all belong to the same generation, a
generation influenced by technological innovation in image production, and often working on
each others' movies. Peter Mettler, for instance, was director of photography and cameraman
for the early films of Bruce McDonald (Knack! Knack! (1985)), Rozema (Passion: A Letter in
16mm (1985)) and Atom Egoyan (Next of Kin (1984) and Family Viewing); Bruce McDonald
did the editing for two films of Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing and Speaking Parts (1989)); in
the collective film Montreal ... vu par, the two English-Canadian directors invited to turn their
gaze on the Quebec metropolis were Atom Egoyan and Patricia Rozema. They all displayed
the preoccupations of their generation, namely a profound distrust of politics as well as a
propensity towards all forms of instability (in matters oflove, finance and jobs), outlining the
concerns of their time at a moment when non-communication, urban rootlessness and isola-
tion were becoming the distinctive marks of the cinema of the l 980s. Directors as far apart
as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Leos Carax, Jean-Jacques Beinex andin Quebec Lea Pool
explored these themes. Through hyper-exaggeration, they are often reminiscent of advertising
strategies, and also of music videos blown up for the big screen during these years like advertis-
ing tools for a run-down music industry. Tue aesthetic codes used by these directors (gigantic
lofts, abandoned industrial parks, highways stretching into infinity, and the use of the video
as a means of communication - the postmodern version of the confession-box) would soon
become stereotypes, not to say cliches, rather than genuine signature marks of the filmmaker.
Rozema escapes neither the fads ofher time nor the influences ofher peer group, nor the
desire, quite clearly stated - though not to the point of absurdity - of presenting the typically
Canadian, not to say Ontarian, aspects of her film. A desire that is becoming less and less
evident in her filmography if White Room ( 1990) and When Night is Falling ( 1995) are anything
to go by, which are equally ethereal but more serious in tone. She has even ventured into the
realm of the English novelist Jane Austen with Mansfield Park (1999). This is a far cry from
Toronto, the city where Polly is anchored. In J've Heard the Mermaids Singing, the capital of the
most populous and most wealthy province in the country is considerably more than a 'zone of
absence' (which is what Geoff Pevere calls it in his essay 'La nouvelle vague ontarienne'). Often
disguised as an anonyrnous North American, not to say typically American, city Toronto is
still a place cherished by Hollywood, especially for economic reasons, but rarely shows off its
cinematographic specificity. Some filmmakers are at pains to camouflage the CN Tower, the
city's distinguishing landmark, which Rozema refuses to do. And just in case a foreign audience
missed the reference to the setting of the film at the beginning, the director rammed home her
140 24 FRAMES
point by sticking a Canadian flag on to Polly's touque (another useful object in these parts!)
during her aerial - and imaginary - wanderings through the Toronto sky.
Beyond these few 'made in Canada' inscriptions (none of which is underwritten by politi-
dans sadly lacking in patriotic pride), J've Heard the Mermaids Singingstands out as a 'Canadian'
film in several ways: in the modesty of its production costs, the ambiguity of the characters'
identity, and the non-resolution of the dramatic stakes, in a typically Canadian finale, avoiding
confrontation to lose itself in the immensity of the landscape.
Tue whole of Canadian cinema occupies what is often merely a symbolic presence on
a world scale and it is often the same back home. This marginality is not just a posture, it is,
first and foremost, an incontrovertible reality of Rozema's film, as it was for so many of her
fellow directors' films, whether they belonged to the 'Ontario New Wave' or not. Tue increased
presence of video imagery in Canadian cinema of that time, for instance, was a response to an
aesthetic concern, creating a deceptively realist image and a sense of closeness to the characters,
but at the same time allowing - with very little effort - the. insertion of images captured in
another take with bigger resources. In addition to the films of Egoyan and Rozema, several
other fi.lmmakers, among them some from Quebec, have gradually incorporated videos and
their falsely interpreted 'realist' aesthetic into their films. Franc;:ois Bouvier and Jean Baudry's
Jacques et Novembre ( 1984) is one of the most striking examples of this technique. This grainy,
impoverished appearance, with no depth of field, underlined the poverty and sense of urgency
of the person who had made it, namely Polly, who, by placing herself off-centre showed both
her amateurism and her spontaneity. Yet the character is conscious of communicating with an
audience, looking straight at the camera to show she is in earnest, even though the whole film
represents only her - highly subjective - point of view. Tue other two characters really only
exist in the very last scene of the film, and not through the filter of the narrator's memory,
when Gabrielle and Marie Joseph discover Polly's secret hiding place and interrupt her video
confession.
Tue deliberately imprecise identity of this strange trio (this holy trinity?) depends on
various devices, beginning with the names of the protagonists, who, in the case of Gabrielle
and Marie Joseph, share in the frequent religious references in the film, but also evoke a certain
sexual ambivalence. Gabrielle St Peres obviously puts us in mind of an angel, who, as we all
know, has no sex at all. And Marie Joseph evokes a famous man/woman couple, the only one in
the history of mankind, to have conceived a child solely through divine intervention. Rozema
dares, not without a certain derision, to attach this narne to the character whose homosexuality
THE CINEMA OF CANADA 141
is the most clearly indicated, refusing both social hypocrisy (like Gabrielle's) and the erot1c
. her sexuality. Rozema refuses categorically to give a label to Polly's sexual orientation, itself
sublimation ofher desires, which Polly achieves through videos and photography.
Gabrielle may speak in a weird accent that is meant to be Swiss - though its idiosyn-
cratic intonation patterns would not fool anyone who knows anything about Quebec French
- and Marie Joseph may be more concerned with trumpeting her lesbianism than in reveal-
ing her partner's artistic-cum-financial swindles, but it is Polly who is the most complex and
ambivalent character in the film. Twenty years earlier, she would probably have taken up her
pen to tell her story, but since she belonged to the generation director Denys Arcand termed
'visually challenged' in his movie Le Declin de l'empire americain (The Decline of the American
Empire, 1986; see Peter Harcourt's chapter on the film in this volume), Polly plunked herself in
front of a video camera, punctuating her speech with frequent hesitations, cowering glances,
malapropisms ('pseudo name' for 'pseudonym', 'bachelorette' for 'bachelor girl') and bathetic
philosophical considerations ('Isn't life the strangest thing you've ever seen ?'). And contrary to
what the viewer may have been thinking throughout the film, Polly's confession, in addition
to its spontaneous and highly subjective side - since the other characters exist only through
her eyes - ends up as extremely fragile, for no trace of it will remain. Whereas the audio tape,
unlike a video film, can be reused, Polly's image and voice can only be transmitted via her
camera screen, which contributes to the volatile, fleeting nature of her communication. What
is more, she wields the dual power ofbeing able to turn offher video camera and Rozema's; the
final shot where she turns round to face the 'other' camera, and hence the viewer, illustrates the
ephemeral, crazy and almost unreal side to this story.
Described by the director as 'someone you wouldn't talk to at a dinner party: Polly is in
no way a social being, belonging rather, in Geoff Prevere's words, to the dass of 'confused and
stunned witnesses to the story'. She is constantly putting her foot in it (the scene in the Japanese
restaurant is one of the funniest in the film), or, paralysed by the fear of the unknown (in this
case the contemporary art world) she turns up at Gabrielle's birthday party after all the other
guests have left. Polly's feeling of alienation, her problems in communicating, and expressing
dearly her ideas and in asserting herself in surroundings where she has mastered neither the
code nor the language make her an eternal loser, an emblematic figure of a whole sector of
Canadian cinema, past and present. Unlike popular Hollywood films in which modest folk
manage to break though dass barriers, mainly through their own efforts, Polly, like some of
Egoyan's characters - though without their cynicism and despair - uses aids to communication
(videos, photography) to counter her evident difficulties in communicating, andin expressing
142 24 FRAMES
an act of courage since it flies in the face of the comfortably obvious formulas used by various
American filmmakers. In Gabrielle, is Polly seeking the reassuring power of a mother, the
soothing authority of a mentor or the enveloping warmth of a lover? Polly takes her secret away
with her, along with Marie Joseph, who has been included in the grand finale of reconciliation
where the landscape is reminiscent of Group of Seven paintings: a typically Canadian image if
ever there was one.
Tue international success of J've Heard the Mermaids Singing naturally gave a boost to
Rozema's career for a while, as well as to the reputation abroad of English-Canadian cinema,
which is all too often assimilated into American independent cinema, with which it shares
the same language, and the same propensity for a lugubrious, schizophrenic universe. Like all
waves, they lose their intensity. Rozema's other feature films explore sexual ambiguity and diffi-
cult love relationships, but with the exception ofher delightful short, Montreal. .. vu par, which
also stars Sheila McCarthy, what we do not find again is the lightness of touch, the wry sense
of mockery, the constant desire to defuse melodramatic scenarios by flights of imaginative
fantasy. This is what gave I've Heard the Mermaids Singing its uniqueness, poetry and charm.
And if Polly is indeed a Canadian heroine, constantly apologetic, seeking the approval
of others for her right to exist, she is proof that there is no lack of imagination or curiosity
or creativity among English-Canadians. High up in the sky, hidden in a tree watching lovers
embracing, or transformed into an orchestra conductor, or into an intellectual, the attractive
character created by Patricia Rozema is in no way inferior, in terms of neuroses, to Atom
Egoyan's, but Rozema treats it all as a joke. Which is a courageous thing to do in a cinema that
is not, unfortunately, given to easy laughter.
Andre Lavoie
Translated from French by Vivian Bosley
THE CINEMA OF CANADA 143